


Won’t You Come Back To Me

by HotCrossPigeon



Series: Hurt!Aziraphale Stories [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angelic Essence, Angst and Humor, Angsty Crowley (Good Omens), Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Whump (Good Omens), BAMF Anathema, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Bickering, Burns, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Caring Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Takes Care of His Angel, Fever, First Kiss, Fluff, Hellfire, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Old Married Couple, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley, Sick Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sorry Not Sorry, The Burning Bookshop, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-12-07 14:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20977547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HotCrossPigeon/pseuds/HotCrossPigeon
Summary: Crowley has already seen the bookshop burn once.This time, though, he knows that it’s hellfire.





	1. In which the bookshop burns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listening to Millionaire Waltz on repeat. The guitar solo sounds a hell of a lot like the good omens theme tune, it’s bloody gorgeous. 
> 
> Anyway... here’s more hurt/comfort for your reading pleasure!

Crowley had put wards up around the bookshop.

It was one of the first things he’d done after the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, visions of the place burning to the ground a few days before swimming around in his head in peals of grief and desperation, that had point blank refused to be ignored. So, in order to be able to sleep through the night, he’d slunk around like a shadowy spectre of the damned, searing demonic wards into the bookshelves, the walls, and the entryway of the angel’s beloved shop, all while Aziraphale tutted in the background about overprotective demons and their needless fussing, but offered him a cup of tea anyway, because even when slightly miffed, the angel was still polite.

“Just to be safe, angel.” Crowley had grumbled as an explanation, though Aziraphale hadn’t asked him for one.

He would have done this before, if he thought he could’ve gotten away with it. But it might’ve looked a bit suspicious, seeing as those other angels dropped by occasionally to check in on the wayward Principality. He could just see Aziraphale now, stumbling over a badly thought out excuse and wringing his hands, as one of those smarmy archangels discovered a distinctly demonic protection ward and sneered in horror. Aziraphale would panic and  mutter a completely unconvincing _Oh dear, oh, good gracious, how on earth did that get there? Most peculiar. Oh, no no, don’t be ridiculous! Of course I haven’t had any demons in my shop! Perish the thought! It's nothing to worry about, I should imagine, just ah, human children and their harmless graffiti no doubt, ah, haha, yes, ho hum, I’ll get that cleared up in a jiffy, yes, well, cup of tea?_

But now, well, they’d told heaven and hell to fuck off, hadn’t they? So, Crowley was free to put up as many wards as he damn well pleased. Ta very much.

The angel had looked at him pointedly over the rim of his own tea cup, observing the coiled sigil he had scorched into the old wood at the top of the door. “Is there something I need to be worried about, my dear?” He had asked, carefully.

Crowley had spared him a half glance over his shoulder, before getting back to it. The protective magic had singed the demon’s fingers a little, as most well-intentioned things tended to do, but it was the burn of a job well done, so he had paid it little mind. “Nahhh. Just a precaution, angel, can’t be too careful.”

Thing was, he had needed the angel safe. He had just needed him to be safe, that was all. The least he could do was scare a few demons away with some protective wards, just in case, for whatever reason, he wasn’t around whenever shit went down. He hadn’t been worried, and he certainly wasn’t being overprotective, it had just been something he had needed to do, so the angel should have shut up and stopped looking at him with so much open fondness that it made the back of his neck prickle uncomfortably under the heat of it.

“Hmm,” the angel had hummed, thoughtfully, “well, I suppose it couldn’t do any harm. Would you care for me to reciprocate, that is, enforce the same sort of magic upon your flat? I could pop around tomorrow to lay a few, ah, booby traps, as it were.”

“No need, angel. Got my own.”

“If you’re sure? Though, perhaps...” Aziraphale had come closer, voice low and careful, “perhaps, you might keep another thermos flask safe for me, instead... It would certainly put my mind at rest to know you have some protection of your own.”

There had been a pause, then. Filled with all sorts of wobbly things that Crowley didn’t want to poke at too much in case they popped and splattered feelings everywhere.

He had swallowed. “If you... if you want... yeah.” And wasn’t that something. Crowley had looked at the angel properly then, with a questioning quirk of his eyebrows, keeping the rest of his face carefully neutral so as not to spook the angel or influence his decision, “Angel. You really sure you’d be all right with that?”

Aziraphale had offered a small honest smile in return, and said, “I trust you, Crowley.”

Well.

And now, the demon was stood outside the bookshop having legged it out of his car at the sight of it, feeling the full weight of that trust like the fucking moon careening out of orbit and plummeting down to earth to squash him flat.

Well.

_Fat lotta good those bloody wards did, eh?_ thought Crowley.

It was like all of his worst nightmares come to life.

The bookshop was currently on fire.

Admittedly, it hadn’t completely gone up in a blazing unholy inferno yet, as it probably should have, because there was no mistaking the sulphurous stink of hellfire that was stinging at his nostrils, and so, by rights, any normal building would have been engulfed in hellish flames in a matter of minutes. But still, the bookshop was currently on fire, all round the edges, the windows and bricks being licked with tongues of orange flame, and it was steadily getting worse the more he stood and looked at it, frozen in shock.

_Ohhhhhh, fuck this all to fuckerington!_

The demon slammed opened the doors with a shove of his hand, and leapt into the fray. Maybe Aziraphale wasn’t even here, if the angel had any sense he would have fled, right? He would have gotten himself out, right? And so Crowley would give the place a quick cursory once over, maybe grab a souvenir, and then bugger off out of here himself and go to find the angel, who’d probably be sat on their bench in St James’ Park waiting for him, looking a little singed, but no worse for wear and -

And there was the angel, sitting calm as you like, in the middle of the bookshop. While it was on fire.

Crowley might have blown his top just a little bit.

“What the - what in the name of - _shit_ \- _shit_ \- bollocks! Angel - what the fucking _fuck_?!”

Aziraphale looked up at him with an expression of utter relief, and flexed his fingers delicately where they were bound to the arms of his desk chair, “Oh, _Crowley_! Hullo, my dear.”

Crowley rushed to him, and immediately attempted to untie the angel, but the bonds hissed and snapped at him, and he hissed and snapped back. They wouldn’t give, even when he manifested a vicious looking set of demonic claws and grappled at them like something from a terrible low budget horror movie.

“Angel,” he hissed out, now attempting to gnaw at the bonds between words, his serpentine fangs sharpening and lengthening both in response to the extreme stress he was under and for practical purposes. “What. Is. _Happening_?!”

“I do believe,” said the angel, with a prim purse of his lips, “that the bookshop is on fire.”

Crowley thunked his head onto the edge of the chair’s arm, next to Aziraphale’s fingers. “Oh, _is_ it?!” He hissed, “_Issss it?!_ I hadn’t noticed!”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, patting the demon on the head a little, as best he could with his restrained hand, as if to calm him down, “I rather think it might be hellfire, actually.”

Crowley wrenched himself upright with a scowl, flinging his hands up dramatically. “I can fucking _see_ that!”

“Well,” huffed Aziraphale, tartly, “I’m afraid that is the extent of my knowledge.”

Someone give him fucking strength. Crowley didn’t know if he could deal with not only his angel being in unspeakable danger, but also, Aziraphale’s usual cheek on top of it.

Those wards he had placed had been to keep low level demons out, or alert him of any dangerous higher demonic presences so he could hightail it round here to deal with them before the angel got into too much trouble. They hadn’t been made with the purpose of keeping out hellfire, and he was sure they wouldn’t be able to stand against it for very long. Already, the room was becoming sinfully hotter, and a few snaking flames were shoving their grasping fingers under the door and through the heat-cracked windows.

But - but why would anyone even bother with hellfire? Everyone they knew who might try and kill them, both above and below, were under the distinct impression that the angel was immune to hellfire, so why bother with this at all, was it just out of petty revenge, or did they know the truth - who the bloody hell would even -

“Angel, someone clearly tied you to chair, then set fire to the place - did you get a good look at who it was?”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, having the good sense to look abashed, “no, I’m afraid I didn’t. That certainly would have been helpful, wouldn’t it? I’m ever so sorry. I was a mite distracted.”

“By what?”

“By being clobbered over the head with a blunt object, I should imagine.”

The demon made a considering sound his throat, “Well, yeah, that would certainly do it.”

“If it helps,” continued the angel, looking a little hot and bothered now, “I believe I’ve been unconscious for around half an hour, or so. By the time I woke, I was already restrained, and unfortunately, nothing I have attempted thus far seems to be able to break the binding.”

Crowley grabbed hold of the back of the angel’s chair and tried to drag it along the floor, but it held fast, as if the legs were stuck to the wooden boards. He put all of his demonic strength into it, but it was like trying to move... well, Aziraphale from a bookshop. It wouldn’t shift.

“Ah. Yes, I’m afraid I already tried that,” Aziraphale gave a little wiggle to emphasise his point and the chair budged not one inch on the floor, “both the chair and the ropes seem to be bound to this particular spot on the earthly plane - it’s actually quite a clever little thing really, very practical. However, I imagine it takes a fair amount of energy to keep such a spell active, and as such, I shan’t imagine that it will remain indefinitely. Probably, and quite unfortunately, for us, the spell will continue to work just long enough to fulfil its purpose of keeping me restrained until the hellfire, ah, kills me.”

While the angel contemplated the artistry of his own demise, the demon was having his own ideas. “What if we cut your hands off?” He suggested, helpfully.

Aziraphale pouted at him. “I’d rather you didn’t,” he chided, lightly, “besides, my dear, the ropes aren’t only attached to my wrists, they’re attached to _me._” He meant his angelic essence, and Crowley could see it now, the chain around his soul, wrapped around his wrists like a tether on a wild bird, “I’m afraid I’m quite trapped here for the time being.”

“Angel, if we don’t get you out of here - this place is gonna burn down, with you inside it! You won’t be discorporated, you’ll be - you’ll be -”

“Quite inconvenienced indeed, I should imagine,” said Aziraphale, “well, not to worry, my dear, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

There was the small space of three seconds, where Crowley’s single brain cell whizzed around his head looking for a hole to escape out of.

“Well?” He snapped, agitatedly.

“Hmm?” Inquired Aziraphale, with a pensive look on his face.

“Have you thought of something yet? We’re kinda short on time here, angel! I’m gonna have to rush you a bit.”

The angel, in lieu of a reply, coughed. It looked painful. The corners of his eyes were crinkling under the strain of it. The bookshop, of course, was still outwardly on fire, and the smoke had started to billow through every available crack in the door and windows. Under Crowley’s frantic gaze he could both feel and see the protective sigils he had made finally crack under the steadily growing demonic pressure. Inky black magic boiled off into the aether. Oh, they were fucked. And the angel was still trying to hack up a lung.

“Stop breathing!” Crowley snapped, trying in vain to break through the ties on the chair again, though as Aziraphale had said, it was quite impossible, and only served to sting his fingers, “Just stop breathing, you bloody idiot! Then you won’t cough, will you?”

The angel glared, but the effect was muted by another ragged, hacking cough. He looked thoroughly put out that he couldn’t reach for a frilly handkerchief and cover his mouth with it. No doubt, in his mind, there was no call for bad manners, even if one’s hands were restrained and one was in the process of being horrifically burnt to a crisp in their own bookshop.

“I do apologise for the inconvenience of having to listen to me,” Aziraphale wheezed out, not sounding apologetic in the least. “But, I’m not breathing, Crowley, I’m hardly that stupid, thank you very much. If you must know it’s - it’s merely the - proximity. It’s having somewhat of an - an adverse effect on me.”

“Well, stop it.” The demon demanded and Aziraphale rolled his eyes and wheezed a bit more and tried to appear that he wasn’t.

“Of course. Ahem. _Ahem_. A-hem. Nothing to be concerned with, my dear, it’s only a tickle,” he said placatingly, and cleared his throat for the umpteenth time with a small, very noticeable to the demon who was looking for it, wince.

Crowley paced around for a bit in a tight circle around the angel, his hands fisting in his red hair and his forked tongue hissing out between his teeth.

“I’m afraid I won’t be of much use to you in my current state,” fretted Aziraphale, finally looking a little scared as the flames crept ever closer, over the threshold of the library proper, hungrily nibbling at the old rug on the floor by the entryway and finally beginning to flicker up the outermost bookcases with relish. Then Crowley realised that he wasn’t afraid for himself at all, there were actual, real tears in his eyes as he proclaimed, “Oh good gracious! The books! Oh no, oh Crowley, the _books_! They’ll be destroyed!”

_He’s been clobbered upside the head, _Crowley reminded himself, _he’s not in his right mind, it won’t do to murder him. Even if he’s a complete fucking imbecile with fucked up priorities._

“Wot?” Crowley breathed at him, incredulously, “Wot about the bloody books?! Who cares about the bloody books!”

He was levelled with a glare so heated he could have mistaken it for being demonic in origin.

“_Crowley_!”

“Angel, you’ll be nothing but a pile of angelic ashes in a few minutes! I don’t give a toss about your books!”

“Well, I do! Of course! And if you cared one jot about me, you might extend the same courtesy to them as well! Oh! This is terrible! Please, my dear, might you spare some time to move them for me? It would be quite a blow, really, to lose them in such a ghastly manner, I don’t think I should survive such a loss.”

“Wha - _well_!” bristled the demon, “_Well_, you aren’t gonna bloody survive are you? If I spend my precious time saving some mouldy old bits of paper instead of saving you! You stupid - _stupid_ \- angel, for the love of all that’s unholy - you are aware this is _hellfire_, right?”

“Yes, dear, quite aware, thank you. I do believe I already explained that particular classification to you, not moments ago. Now, ahem, if you’d be so kind, the books?”

Ssssatan boil his bollocks like a couple of fucking new potatoes! “Wha -” Crowley breathed, incredulously, “_No._ Angel, _no_. Miracles aren't working in here, remember? Or had you forgotten? What - what d’you want me to _do_? You want me to just - just lug them out of here _by hand_?!”

Aziraphale fixed him with that familiar look of his, the pleading, soulful, wide eyed, imploring look, with his bottom lip protruding outwards slightly and his blue eyes welling up, and oh Christ, no, this was beyond stupid. No. Crowley wasn’t doing it. He wasn’t doing it!

“If you think, for one fucking _second_, that I’m leaving you in here, while the whole place is swarming in hellfire, so I can save your bloody books!” yelled Crowley, knowing he had already lost, “You - you’ve got another thing coming, you - you blessed _idiot_!”

“Just my private collection,” amended Aziraphale, politely, “they’re quite conveniently displayed at the back, behind that rather singed curtain. The first editions, and the misprinted bibles, naturally. And of course, my signed books of prophecy, it would certainly be a travesty to forget those. I had hoped to keep them away from prying fingers, and isn’t it a good thing I had the foresight to do so? Do you know, ahem, that some people simply do not know the meaning of looking only with their eyes?”

“Oh, _hrnk_, really angel?” Crowley stalked to the curtain, ripping it down. There were the angel’s books, miraculously unscathed, must have been some prior angelic magic involved. There was also, way too many of them. It was like a smaller bookshop hidden back here.

“I can’t carry all these!” The demon insisted, feeling like his life was spiralling rapidly out of control, “Fucking heaven, angel, there’s about fifty of the sodding things!”

Aziraphale, the absolute bastard, had the audacity to tut, “Oh, of course you can, my dear. It might take you a few trips, but it’ll be worth it, I assure you. Now, just make a neat little stack, and -”

“No. No way! Angel, I’m sorry, really I’m sorry - well, actually not that sorry - but you’re gonna have to pick your favourites. Or have none at all.”

Aziraphale wilted.

“Oh, oh dear, are you quite certain that you can’t -“ Crowley growled and the angel seemed to realise he had pushed his luck a little too far and with a wobbly voice continued, “Very well, ahem, the top shelf then, if you please.”

Crowley quickly gathered them up, dropping one or two with fumbling fingers, all the while Aziraphale interjected from his seat with helpful things like:

“Do be _careful_, Crowley!” And “Please, don’t bend the spine, dear, it’s liable to crack,” And the one he almost wilfully ignored, “And if you _dare_ even _think_ of forgetting the Wilde, I shan’t ever forgive you!”

“Oi! Sssshut up, you want me to do this or what? Don’t - rrrgghh - _angel_! You know you’re lucky I’m even helping at all! Now you just - just _sit there and think of something!_”

Crowley ran with an armful of teetering, priceless books to the entrance of the shop, which by now was doing its best impression of a recently lit bonfire that had been doused liberally in petrol. He crowded the scriptures and other crumbling old texts close to his chest to ensure they didn’t set aflame, and got a little singed himself due to some of their holiness leaking out from disgruntled pages.

Crowley cared not a jot for the angel’s book collection. He was only doing this because Aziraphale was right, the angel would be quite inconsolable if anything befell his precious bloody books. He’d no doubt descend into one of his rare, but still terrifying, fits of brooding melancholy, and maybe even sniffle over a few dozen bottles of brandy, and assure the demon that he was fine, perfectly tip top, tippety toppety, but then he would go very, very, painfully quiet, and refuse to eat anything, even those dainty flaky pastries from his favourite bakery, the ones with the fresh cream and sugared violets, and Crowley would have to bloody pull him out of it, wouldn’t he? He’d have to haul the idiot out of the dark recesses that he’d carelessly slipped into, and it’d take bloody aaaages, and it was an absolute pain in the arse, really, a complete disaster, and even worse he’d have to deal with the grateful glances afterwards, and well, yeah, it was worth preventing all of that drivel, by any means necessary.

Even if it meant hauling a bunch of stupid books out of a burning building.

Crowley begrudgingly admitted that it was one thing for the bookshop itself to be burnt to a crisp, because yes it was home, but it could eventually be replaced, with enough time and effort. It was quite another thing entirely for the angel’s treasured and meticulously cared for, and damned irreplaceable, antique books to do the same.

_Fffffffuck’s ssssssake!_

The things Crowley did for that ungrateful bastard.

The demon got to the door, which was somehow still mostly intact, prised it open, and then he tossed the books out, and by some stroke of demonic luck, once they were free from the powerful occult magic swirling around the bookshop, they neatly stacked themselves into the small boot of his Bentley without much fuss.

“There!” Crowley grumbled, shouting over the now roaring flames, turning back immediately to glare into the bookshop at the stupid angel, “Are you bloody _happy now_, angel?!”

There was no response.

Crowley breathed in a lungful of hot swirling demonic smoke, in shock.

“Angel!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right so, this one’s unfinished as of yet, but it’s growing exponentially and demanded to be posted. 
> 
> Please let me know if you think it’s worth continuing! 
> 
> Comments and kudos motivate me waaay too much :) and I love every one of you reading this.


	2. In which the angel does too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right... this is the big one.  
Sorry not sorry.

In the scant few seconds that Crowley had been gone, the fire had grown vicious teeth and scrabbling claws. The bookshelves had been engulfed with blazing orange, scorching red, and sizzling, hot white.

Crowley looked desperately into the flames and for one heart clenching moment, couldn’t see his angel anywhere within them. 

Shit, that - that was what would happen wouldn’t it? If he’d been burnt, if the flames had - if the fire had got him - there’d be nothing left of him, would there? Just _fwoomph! _

Here one second, gone the next.

And with that horrible thought, Crowley was running through the fire, gripped by a panic so vivid he could taste it.

Because fuck _that_.

Thank Somebody he’d miracled up the clothes he was currently wearing, or he’d surely have been stark bollock naked right about now. The flames coiled around his form hungrily, and everything was impossibly bright, and hot and wriggling, as if a thousand fiery maggots were writhing over his skin trying to devour him whole, and then - and then, he was through to the small space where the angel had been before. And Crowley could have collapsed in a boneless heap, because - because -

The only thing currently not on fire was the angel himself and the ever decreasing small patch of wooden flooring where his chair was still perched, rather precariously.

Aziraphale’s face, warped by the hazy heat of the nearing flames, looked a little wild in the eyes, and Crowley rushed to him, mindless of anything and everything else that got between him and his angel. Because, yes, Aziraphale was still alive, but he was very much still in danger, and the flames were getting closer, and they only retreated the tiniest bit when he snapped at them and -

_And I shouldn’t have bloody left him! _thought Crowley, shakily,_ Stupid! Stupid sodding angel and his stupid sodding books -! If he did that on purpose - if he - I’m going to _kill_ him - !_

Before he managed to grasp Aziraphale around the shoulders, using his own body to shield him from the flames, a few tiny, wayward embers drifted languidly down through the thick eddies of superheated air, and landed on the angel’s neck.

The skin sizzled audibly.

Aziraphale’s face instantly twisted into one of agony, eyes screwing up tightly, so that those crow’s feet that usually crinkled with joy or laughter, were now scrunched in poignant anguish. The angel’s white teeth clenched together, pink lips pulling back in a pained grimace, and he let out a keening sound that pierced through the air like the crack of a whip, so much contained within it that it threatened to break through reality itself, the very atoms around them quivering under the force of it.

Crowley had never moved so fast in his life. His arms shot out, hands outstretched to bat at the angel’s neck, frantically, patting out the embers before they could take root in his soft skin. Crowley drew Aziraphale close, tucking the angel against his chest and hissing at the flames as they danced just a hairsbreadth away from them both.

“Oh, _fuck_. Shit, _bollocks_! You and your stupid books! Angel, you with me? It’s okay, it’s okay. I saved them, even your stupid Wilde, nice and safe.”

Aziraphale buried his face in the demon’s neck, and _mewled_. Crowley wrapped his arms around the angel fully, forced to practically sit on the angel’s lap - and this was the closest they’d ever been, fuck the circumstances that brought it about - as he did his best to cover any of Aziraphale’s exposed skin with his own lanky body.

Hell, all of the angel was exposed, really. His carefully kept clothes, his balding velvet waistcoat and centuries old coat, his slightly rumpled periwinkle blue shirt and pastel tartan bow tie - none of it would keep the hellfire out, it’d all just go up like a bunch of bloody firelighters.

Crowley needed to _do_ something - think of _something_ \- or else he’d be holding a very dead angel in his arms very soon.

Fuck it just - _think!_

“My dear... my dearest...” Aziraphale was mumbling into his shirt where his head lay, his white hair washed a muted orange in the firelight.

Crowley grit his teeth. “Ssshh, shut up! I’m thinking!”

“Crowley, I - I don’t want you to see this.”

“Sssshut up!”

“I couldn’t bear it. Please.”

The demon growled and his mouth was suddenly full of vicious fangs. “Well you can fuck right off, with that crap! I’m not leaving you. Don’t you _dare_ ask me to, angel.”

The angel actually tried to push him away, then, using his upper body to force Crowley up and off of him.

“Sstop moving! Do you have a bloody death wish?!”

“Get - get away, demon!” The angel cried, and there was true pain in his voice as he pulled his head back and resolutely stared Crowley in the face, the wet in his eyes catching the glare of orange and yellow flames. “Leave me be!”

It was as if the angel had punched him in the stomach, all the hot, bitter air whooshed right out of his lungs. He flopped his mouth open, “Aziraphale -”

“I said get _away_ from me!”

And if Crowley’s cold, demonic heart hadn’t already broken, it might have done so in the horrible struggle that followed.

Aziraphale bucked underneath him, crying out for him to leave, to go, to get away, as all around them the flames grew higher and hotter and if the angel wasn’t careful those swirling embers would catch in his hair, on his clothes. It was all Crowley could do to shield him.

“I don’t - I don’t want you here,” the angel gasped out, their faces so close that his eyes seemed as bright as falling stars, “Do you hear me? I want you to leave. I don’t _ever_ want to see you again!”

And even though, for one horrifying second, Crowley wasn’t sure of it himself, he plastered a manic grin on his face and said, “You _do!_”

Aziraphale looked desperate, horrible black smoke writhing around them like a tangible creature, “Go... go _away_...!”

But Crowley just shook his head and clung all the tighter, grasping at the angel’s back desperately, even as Aziraphale tried to shake him off. The angel strained in the chair, shying away from the demon in a manner he’d never done before, he’d never once flinched away from Crowley like this, and fuck but it _hurt _to see it happen now. Aziraphale was steadfastly trying to move his head as far backwards in the unmoving chair as he could, wincing as the burn on his neck stretched at the movement. When it became clear that Crowley had no intention of letting him go, the angel even kicked out his legs, once.

“Ow! _Angel!_ Oh, you bastard, ow, ow that’s gonna leave a bruise -”

Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut, guiltily, and turned his face to the side. He was flushed pink, and utterly miserable.

And Crowley knew it then, knew the angel better than he knew himself.

“Would you just - listen to me. Listen, you idiot. You don’t want to me to go, I know you don’t, your voice goes all high-pitched and squeaky when you lie to me -”

The angel still twisted away, but he offered up a flimsy, “It most certainly does _not_ -” in mock-outraged retaliation, and Christ, it was the most beautiful thing Crowley had ever heard. The demon grasped at it, nodding encouragingly.

“It _does_! It really does. And I’m not - I’m not fucking leaving. You know I’m not - you already _know_ I’m not going to just waltz out of here and go get a bloody coffee or something while you’re sat in here on bloody fire! So stop this stupid wiggling around, all right? We can wrestle later, if that’s what you want. You can shout at me - smite me, even - make me sit through bloody Hamlet again - I don’t care! I’ll let you! Just...”

_Just - stop it, please._

And after a long terrifying moment, where the demon thought he might truly be rejected after all of this time, that he wouldn’t be able to offer the angel any comfort in this hellish nightmare, that their last moments together would be pained and jagged and at odds - Aziraphale finally stopped struggling.

He just... wilted. All of the fight draining out of him, along with a soft sob that was wrenched suddenly out of trembling pink lips. Crowley grasped the back of the angel’s head and clutched him close.

Aziraphale let himself be held. He was limp, with his head bowed forward.

Christ, he was still alive, wasn’t he? Crowley did a quick check to make sure - yep, yeah, still alive, just... were those tears? Fuck. Those were tears. Fuck _fuck_.

Well, at least the angel wasn’t still kicking him in the shins, so that was something.

And Aziraphale said that _Crowley_ was the drama queen. Fffff. As if.

He clutched the angel closer, in that swarming blistering heat.

There had to be something. Crowley could break the ropes, the binding if he just - if he just - but he couldn’t control the fire, it was spiralling - tearing at the books at the floor, at the walls - hungrily consuming everything in sight -

“Crowley,” breathed the angel in sudden realisation, breaths coming out in pained rasps on the demon’s skin just above his open shirt collar, “Your wings, they - they might be able to... offer some protec- protectio- ” he descended into a fit of horrible grating coughs that shook them both.

“Right, right - yeah! Good thinking - just a sec,” Crowley manifested his wings, breaking them through the barrier between the plane of this world and quickly mantling them up and around the two of them, to block out the encroaching flames.

It would be all right. Be fine. Nothing he couldn’t do. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. He’d protect the angel, while the bookshop burnt to the ground around them. S’all good. Just a completely normal fucking Saturday night.

Aziraphale pressed his face into the crook between Crowley’s shoulder and neck, and the demon could feel the wet of tears on his skin, and the soft pants of anguished breath. He’d thought about holding the angel like this before, so many times. Without the threat of imminent demise, of course, and admittedly a fair bit more snuggling.

“I’ve got you,” the demon murmured, in the dark cocoon of his wings, “be all right angel, we’ll fix the place up, you’ll see. Nothing to it. Promise. Just hold on to me, your knight in shining armour, er, in shining skinny jeans. Whatever. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“Crowley,” the angel sobbed into his damp skin, then moved so that his forehead was resting there, and his face nuzzled into the demon’s shirt. He didn’t say anything else, but his hands fisted into Crowley’s jacket with a raw desperation.

Crowley continued to mutter soothing nonsense, and all around them the crackle and spit of hellfire burned and raged, the sound was muffled somewhat by his heavy wings, but he could feel the heat on the outside of his feathers like the gentle caress of a lover. It was so strange to think that something that couldn’t harm him at all, would burn his angel up until there was nothing left.

Crowley tightened his wings around Aziraphale, and the flames lapped at him like lit gas around the bottom of a blackened pot.

The demon could stop the burn of the flames from entering, but he couldn’t keep the heat out, and as such Aziraphale had started to sweat. In the dark of their sanctuary, the angel pressed himself close and Crowley could feel Aziraphale’s damp curls under his chin, there were beads of moisture gathering on his forehead, and on the sweaty palms that still clung to Crowley’s front. It was like a sauna in their small pocket of safety, and despite the protective bubble, the angel was still suffering. He was fevered and damp, and his hot breath stuttered out into horrible painful sounding coughs every few minutes.

Crowley wasn’t sure how hellfire affected angels.

He hoped against hope that Aziraphale would make it through this, but he knew what lasting damage a measly few drops of holy water could do to a demon. Fuck knows what this was gonna do to his angel. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth, and refused to think about it too much, just cuddled the angel closer to him and waited for the hellfire to burn itself out.

It might have been hours.

But slowly, the fire began to wane.

Crowley gently loosened his grasp on the angel, immediately snapping his head up and out of their feathery shelter to make sure no flames were still alight near them.

There was nothing but smouldering ash and a few last glowing orange embers. The flames had eaten every last scrap of paper, every book, every heavy tome, the bookshelves had collapsed into spindles of blackened wood and there were gaping holes in the ceiling and walls where the hellfire had gouged out brick and mortar. Some of the walls still stood, but they were cracked and darkened with soot. The angel’s bookshop, his _home_ was...

Crowley didn’t want Aziraphale to see this, he just wanted to hold him close and press the angel’s face back against his chest. Tell him to close his eyes. But they needed to get out of here.

The demon swallowed, gritting his teeth, and deemed it safe enough to finally tuck his wings away, slowly, so as not to fan any remaining dwindling cinders.

Crowley turned his attention on Aziraphale, putting gentle, guiding hands on his shoulders as he leant him back a little, _oh, so carefully,_ and inspected the angel for damage.

Well.

Fuck.

Aziraphale’s eyes were red rimmed and weepy, bringing out the blue of his irises in stark contrast. His face was a startling white with two red splashes of colour across his cheekbones that made him look horribly ill, and his white curls were wet and sticking to his forehead and curling around his ears. On his forehead there glistened droplets of sweat, like raindrops on a window after a storm, and his shirt was damp with it, the fabric clinging to his skin in places. The angel’s fingers trembled as they clutched at Crowley in any way they could.

And his neck - his neck was... oh, _angel._

“Hey, angel, it’s all right. It’s all right now,” Crowley soothed, unsure as to the angel’s current mental state.

Aziraphale seemed dazed and his eyes weren’t focusing on anything, which might be a small mercy actually, considering the state of the bookshop. Crowley tried to imagine what he would have felt like if the angel had just saved his arse from a swimming pool full of holy water, and thought he’d probably be a complete gibbering wreck, if he was honest. Probably comatose, or doing his best approximation of it. At least Aziraphale was still conscious, but then, he’d always been the stronger one.

“The fire’s gone out.” Crowley explained gently, unaware if the angel’s mind was even with him right now, but finding the need to ground him, just in case a part of him was listening, “We’re safe, angel, we’re safe, all right?”

Aziraphale’s response was a wheezing, scraping cough, that brought bright blood to his lips. It spilled out of the corner of his mouth in a damning crimson line.

“Shit, _shit_ \- okay,” stuttered Crowley, eyes wide, “okay, angel - oh _bollocks_ \- you’re fine. You’re fine! Everything’s fine, let’s get you up and out of here, eh? Come on. That’s it, angel. Up we go.”

Now that the fire had gone out, the angel’s restraints had seemingly dissolved clean out of existence. Maybe they’d even been gone before then, they must have, because the angel had been clinging to him. Didn’t matter, it wasn’t as if they could’ve moved through the flames without risking further harm to the angel. Crowley didn’t care what had happened to the fucking things, he was just grateful he didn’t have to worry about moving anymore. He could finally get his angel the sodding hell out of here.

Somehow, haltingly, they were both able to stand up on wobbly legs. Crowley supported Aziraphale’s weight as best he could and tried to lead the shaky angel out of the smouldering remains of his beloved bookshop.

They only managed a few steps.

Aziraphale teetered and then bent in half, his hacking cough brought up more than blood this time, though that did splatter down the front of his waistcoat and onto the ground too. This time a few golden wisps of light escaped from his lips like fleeing fireflies, they twinkled through the air before his white face, illuminating the glistening skin with dabs of golden light for a few seconds, before disappearing.

Crowley attempted not to panic.

He failed.

Aziraphale’s legs folded under him then, and he dragged them both to the floor.

“Oof! Oi - oi, that’s no place to lie down angel. Hey - hey, come on,” Crowley pleaded, clinging to the angel with hands more like claws than human fingers, “angel, for fuck’s sake, get up. Get up! Come on, don’t do this, I just saved you, you bastard! You owe me a drink. Can’t die until you buy me a drink. Several drinks. ‘xpensive drinks... Angel?”

This was so much worse than anything that had happened to them before. Yes, they’d had discorporations aplenty over the millennia, neither of them being all that careful when it came to personal safety. But though bodies could take a while to come by, they were only bodies in the end and it was nothing a quick miracle or a hefty dose of paperwork couldn’t fix. They had never been truly hurt down to their essence before. But now Aziraphale was wounded, the hellfire had done something, scorched down to the angel’s very core of his being, and Crowley was terrified.

The angel was on his knees, wheezing as if he couldn’t catch a breath, and a great slew of tiny glimmering lights accompanied each painful gasp. They whooshed out like embers in a stoked fireplace and danced around the wreckage of the bookshop. It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so horrible. A veritable cosmos of dwindling stars.

Crowley knew what it meant, he’d seen the like before during the Great War in Heaven. It was his essence breaking apart. The angel was dying. Aziraphale was dying.

Nah, fuck that right up the arse.

Not on his damn watch.

“Angel,” breathed Crowley, beyond scared, “you stop that, stop it right now.”

His angel made no response, in fact he had started to list alarmingly to the side and his eyes were closed. Crowley held onto him.

“You never - bloody - _listen_ to me!” The demon croaked, as he bent and gathered the angel up into his arms.

Aziraphale was heavier than him, but Crowley was strong when he needed to be and desperation was a decent motivating factor. He scooped the angel up as if he were child, one arm under his knees and the other around his damp back. Aziraphale gasped wetly into his shoulder, and Crowley cradled the angel close to him, attempting not to think about the way Aziraphale’s skin burned against his own, as though the angel were in the grips of a raging fever. The burn on the angel’s neck stood out starkly against his white skin, like rot on the soft canvas of an oil painting, Crowley looked away from it and grit his teeth.

He stumbled up, almost drunkenly, with the angel limp as a rag doll in his arms. What was left of the crumbling doors parted to let them pass under the demon’s glare.

And then they were outside.

The air was cool and crisp and startling. It was enough to spur him on, away from the ruins of Aziraphale’s home and towards some hope of safety.

The Bentley.

Holy Christ. Crowley had never been so happy to see his beloved car.

She was parked on the curb where he’d left her, now covered in a thin patina of settling white ash. It looked like there was the remains of half a bloody Jane Austen collection on the bonnet, but thankfully it didn’t look as though any lit embers had found their way onto the paintwork. Just the cold drifting particles of destroyed bookshop.

Crowley bundled Aziraphale up in a miracled blanket and shoved him haphazardly into the passenger seat. Then he wobbled round the other side, tumbled into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut.

He sat there clutching at the steering wheel for a few moments with trembling white fingers. His nails left dimpled crescent moons in the leather, before he finally snapped out of it, and flicked the knob to turn the windscreen wipers on. They gouged two half circles through the ash that covered the front window. It was barely enough to see by, but that didn’t stop the demon from careening off the curb and through the dimly lit streets of London like a bat out of hell.

“I’ll get you somewhere safe, angel. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Crowley promised, more to himself than the unconscious angel in the passenger seat, who looked as though he might just be dead already, actually, and wouldn’t that just be the icing and shiny little glacé cherry on top of the sodding cake.

Don’t think about it. Everything’s tickety bloody boo.

He cleared his throat and pushed his foot down on the accelerator until the speedometer flicked all the way to the right.

“My flat’s a no go, though, obviously, they’re probably there right now, whatever bastards thought this absolute _nightmare_ up. They’re probably there waiting to ambush us, angel. And the bookshop’s clearly out of fucking commission for the foreseeable _forever_... Right. So. Options! _Options_. Love me some options. Loadsa options. Tonnes of options. Let’s see...”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, but they were shaking so hard it sounded like a drum roll. He stilled his fingers purposefully, clenching them around the leather.

“What about that place in Charing Cross - the old safe house, you remember that? Had that old moth ball smell to it. Whatever happened to that old place? Haven’t used it in centuries. Oh - wait - no, I remember, it got torn down to make way for that park a couple of hundred years back, didn’t it, angel? Yes. It did, don’t _argue_ with me. And our last bolthole up in Plaistow got turned into a Portuguese restaurant, so, uh, huh, now that I think about it, not too many places to pick from, really. Bit limited on the old options front. Don’t s’pose you’ve got any suggestions, angel?”

Aziraphale’s head made a small thunk sound against the window as Crowley turned abruptly left. A few streetlamps jumped out of the way, and a telephone box promptly disappeared before it could be smashed through by the roaring Bentley’s hood.

Crowley’s voice was high and reedy, “Oh, _very_ helpful! Yes, _thanks so much_ for your _valuable input_, Angel. Fat lot of bloody good you are! Guess I’ll have to be the brains of this operation, eh? As usual.”

One of Aziraphale’s hands flopped out of the blanket at the next roundabout. Crowley reached out with one of his, to grasp it. The fingers were hot and balmy against his palm. So, not dead yet then. It was a bloody miracle. Halla-bloody-looyah. He gave the limp fingers a tentative squeeze and fixed his eyes on the road.

“You’ve been pretty friendly with that witch lately, right? Yeah, yeah, don’t try and hide it, angel. I know all about it. Don’t think I haven't noticed all those sordid little tea meetings you’ve been having - you’re like two old women in a bloody knitting circle.”

The angel was breathing, he could hear it, just under the rumble of the Bentley’s engine. A stuttering, wheezing, glorious thing.

“‘Cept instead of knitting woolly baby socks and gossiping about the neighbours,” Crowley continued, “you just natter on about some occult book you picked up, or have a heated discussion about why burning sage is a mistranslation and the witch would be better off burning a cabbage or some rubbish. No, I wasn’t eavesdropping, shut up. _Eavesdropping_, as if - why would I - you too are just bloody _loud_ when you get into it. Whole bloody street could hear you. Anyway. What d’you reckon, angel? Think she’d mind us crashing at her place? Worth a try, right?”

A single orb of golden light went dancing casually over the dashboard, before stuttering out of existence like a cheap firework.

Crowley risked a glance at the passenger seat.

Not much was visible of Aziraphale’s face, beyond the tip of his pink nose and his closed eyes, above the blanket. His white hair was ludicrously curly in its sweat-dampened state, all tight coils and wispy ends. The angel was unmoving, but every now and then a breath would be exhaled, and with it, a small glimmering piece of the angel’s life.

Crowley couldn’t see through the windscreen anymore, it blurred and splotched as if with rain. He took a gulp of air, that could have been a sob, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t, and he gritted his teeth and gunned it down the road without looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I’m writing this as I go. And editing constantly. Which is terrifying. And that was the last truly planned out chapter, so we’re currently sailing in remarkably dangerous, and frankly quite treacherous, waters...  
Please let me know if you’re still enjoying the story.  
And thank you so much for taking the time to read it :)


	3. In which Anathema takes charge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t kill me, please.  
Here’s an extra long chapter, to make up for the wait and the previous cliffhanger :) I really hope you enjoy this one, it ran away from me, and took some editing to wrangle back into place.

Crowley was exhausted.

He’d only just realised the extent of which when he’d finally managed to get his unresponsive fingers to grapple at the handle of the car door, and then, had all but fallen out of the Bentley.

He caught himself on the back of its leather seat and heaved himself upright on teetering, spindly legs.

They’d somehow made it to Jasmine Cottage, and it sat, unassuming, on the side of the street, unaware that it would soon be accosted by a mostly dead angel and his fucking frantically panicking demonic counterpart.

The village of Tadfield was quiet, blanketed by the darkness of night, and the one street lamp that was working on this particular stretch of residential area illuminated the pavement, and not much beyond it, with a dim circle of fuzzy orange light.

Crowley glanced blearily at it, and his feet, while he got his bearings.

Right, so.

Witch house. Check.

Now, there was just the small matter of that bloody horseshoe he could see above the doorway. Crowley could feel its dormant power crackling all along the back off his neck from here.

He spoke to Aziraphale, voice impossibly gentle, “Gonna go make our introductions, angel, feel free to wait in the car. Just gonna be a tic.”

Then he slammed the car door shut as loudly as he dared, to make up for it. Aziraphale didn’t stir, just rocked slightly in the aftermath. A plume of bookshop ash was disturbed though, by the sudden force, and Crowley wafted an annoyed hand to disperse it. The Bentley might be a little peeved at him. And with good reason. She was caked in grime, had just been pushing two hundred on the motorway on an empty tank, and didn’t deserve to have her door slammed by a grieving demon.

Crowley patted her, once, on the hood.

Then he sauntered up to the garden gate, wedged it open and managed to walk, unsteadily, up the winding path, flanked by dark shadowy grass, furled bushes, and sleeping flower buds to the front door, and its bloody protective horseshoe.

“Listen, you, uh, _horseshoe_,” Crowley said to it, quite calmly considering the circumstances. His eyebrows were raised and his hands out, placatingly, “I won’t harm the witch, promise. I mean, unless she tries to harm me first, then fair’s fair. You understand. I mean, I won’t throw the first punch, but if she tries to exorcise me I won’t be held respons’ble for retaliating in a demonic manner. Ngh, no,” he waved an irritable hand, “forget I said that, all of that, that was bollocks. I’m getting off topic. Listen,” Crowley started again, and leaned heavily against an unfortunate nearby rose bush. “My best friend needs help. And he’s an’angel, you know, so that counts for something, doesn’t it? You seem like a nice, reasonable horseshoe, I think you can appreciate that you’re on the same side, right? He’s a guardian, like you. Well. Sometimes. Well. It’s mostly just books now, or it was, but he has protected the occasional human, in his time, occasional human abode, and he did the whole bloody earth a couple of months back, anyway - point _is_, you’ve got a lot in common. And I’m trying to keep him from corking it. So, do me a favour and don’t try and smite me, or send me back to hell, or whatever it is that you do.” The demon made his best attempt at an innocent face, and then shrugged because, well, fuck it, he’d probably pleaded his case enough to chance entering. He ended the one-sided conversation with a wobbly, “Ta very much,” and proceeded to the witch’s door.

His speech must have worked, because Crowley got to the door, unsmote, and hammered upon it.

And thank fuck for that.

It occurred to the demon then, standing on the porch in the dark, that it was nighttime, possibly early morning, and the witch was probably asleep, and not up for catering to visitors. This, of course, didn’t stop Crowley. He pounded harder on the door with a closed fist making a racket loud enough to wake the dead. Probably not loud enough to wake the angel currently dying in the front seat of his Bentley though.

There was the sound of the lock clicking open, and the door unlatching from the other side.

It opened.

Anathema, upon opening the door to her cottage at a godawful time of night and seeing a demon perched anxiously on her doorstep, fist still raised from his obnoxiously loud knocking, could have said a number of things. ‘Do you know what bloody time it is?’, ‘Was that you I heard making a racket out here, conversing with an inanimate horseshoe?’ and ‘Bugger off’, being the chief responses.

Anathema, however, said none of these things, and Crowley began to realise just why his angel had struck up an unlikely friendship with her, when she immediately asked him, “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

Crowley did his best impression of a fish, his mouth opened soundlessly a few times, and then he jerked a thumb at the Bentley behind him.

“I er, can’t get him out by myself,” he said, by way of explanation.

And it was true, though the demon was loathe to admit it, there was no way he would be able to lug Aziraphale out of the car by himself. Crowley’s arms trembled, his vision was all wobbly, and he had bits of thorny rose bush stuck in the elbow of his jacket sleeve, and if he was honest with himself he thought he might, maybe, just be in shock, a little bit. Possibly.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed to get the angel into the car in the first place. Everything was getting a little hazy.

Anathema tied the knot of her dressing gown tighter around her, slipped on some old boots that were haphazardly lying by the welcome mat, and was out of the door without another word. She reached the grimy, ash covered, Bentley and her dark eyes beheld the sight of the angel, bundled up against the passenger side window like so much dirty laundry.

“What _happened?!_” She gasped out.

Yeah, the angel looked pretty bad from here, didn’t he? Dark bloodstains on his waistcoat, blanket flopped around his middle like an afterthought, face washed a sickly orange from the light of the street lamp, ruined grubby clothes, also, seemingly, dead. Not the best first impression.

Crowley had followed her, somehow managing to stumble back across the garden path to the pavement on disjointed legs. And now he was attempting not to give into the prickle behind his eyes, “Stuff.” Crowley said, completely inadequately, “Demons, maybe, angels,” he shrugged, “who really knows at this point, we seem to have pissed off everyone, ssso take your bloody pick.”

Anathema rushed to the window, and fumbled with the door handle, getting it open. And huh, it opened. The Bentley must like her, that was weird. She didn’t open for everyone. Maybe she was still pissed off at him, and was letting anyone touch her just to rile him up. Well. It was working. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the witch, because Aziraphale obviously did and that was good enough for Crowley to do so by extension. It was that he didn’t let just anyone get their hands on his beloved, and he hadn’t had enough interaction with this particular human to warrant an exception.

In conclusion, the Bentley was either very pissed off, or very worried about it’s current cargo.

Aziraphale nearly fell out of the car entirely, without the door there to support him, but the witch’s hands were quick and steady on his shoulders and she carefully pushed him back into a seated position before he could topple out.

The angel’s dirty blonde head lolled to the other side, until Crowley could no longer see the slack features of his face. Those horrible hellfire burns, that had viciously clawed up the angel’s neck, were now clearly visible, in all their disfiguring, blistered, puckered glory.

Anathema looked unspeakably worried. She was probably right to look like that. She looked how Crowley felt, actually, if he was honest. ‘Course the demon was much better at keeping a handle on his own emotions. Obviously. Wouldn’t do for a creature of Hell to look upset. And he didn’t. He looked fine. He was the epitome of fucking fine.

“Are those burns?”

“Nn,” managed Crowley, softly, “n’yeah.”

The witch was touching the angel now, “He’s much too hot - feverish. Is he sick?”

“Mm.” 

“All right. I’ve got some medical supplies, I can only hope they’ll be compatible with... never mind, I can help. I’ll think of something.” Then to the angel, she said carefully, “Aziraphale? Can you hear me?”

Crowley leaned on the side of the Bentley, because his legs were no longer a reliable form of keeping himself upright.

The angel, of course, didn’t answer the witch, because he was completely fucking out of it, maybe even... well. Maybe he’d snuffed it in the time it took for Crowley to stumble out of the car and back again. Who knew. Crowley didn’t.

Anathema was looking at him, with all sorts of things flitting about in her expression, like a swarm of anxious butterflies, but the foremost of which was determination. “Is he going to be all right?” She asked, quite daringly.

“Dunno,” replied the demon, honestly, “probably not,” and his voice cracked in straight down the middle like a tree struck by lightning.

Anathema, graciously, decided not to bring attention to it. She took charge, “Well, he will be if I have anything to say about it,” she decided. And even in her dressing gown and old boots, she cut quite an imposing figure. Crowley almost believed her. “Stay here with him, I’ll wake Newt. The two of us can manage, we’ll just get him inside before the neighbours moan about it, and then we’ll go from there.”

She turned to look at Crowley properly then, and the demon felt himself being appraised. He attempted to appear anything but completely and utterly terrified, and tried to straighten a bit from his flopped position on the roof of his car. Once again, he was glad of the dark rounded sunglasses that hid half of his face from view. Even with their help though, he got the distinct feeling that he had failed in his endeavours, because Anathema’s eyebrows had crinkled in the middle, and her brown eyes grew even more concerned behind her large round spectacles.

“Come inside and sit down,” she told him, in no uncertain terms.

Crowley felt as if he were standing on a ship, rocked by waves. Everything was all wonky. “Nah,” he murmured, voice sounding odd to his own ears, as if it were coming from the bottom of a well, “Actually. Might be better if I just drop him off here,” Crowley mumbled, “then I can try and uh, find them, then prob’ly kill them, or lead them away.”

It made sense. It made sense that he should do that, right? It would be foolish to think that they were safe here, at some poky old witch’s cottage with its feeble little horseshoe that didn’t even keep a lowly demon like him out. Hell, Crowley’s own demonic wards couldn’t keep the bookshop safe, what made him think this place would be any better? One bit of hellfire, and poof, this building would be gone too. Angel, and witch, and that salamander guy. All gone. Up in Hell smoke. 

It made sense that he should leave, should find out who was behind this, and get to them before they could find them here. Before those bastards could continue what they had started.

“I’ve gotta go,” he slurred, “s’only way.”

Anathema looked at him as if he were crazy, which, well, was fair enough really.

“What are you _talking_ about?”

“Whoever did this,” Crowley explained, “they’re gonna come snooping around sooner or later. Try and finish us off. _Him_ off. Can’t have that. I should stop them - I should -”

Anathema glared at him and Crowley’s mouth snapped closed, quite involuntarily. “Don’t you dare leave. Now, get a hold of yourself,” she scolded, “and go inside.”

Crowley blinked at her, owlishly, for a moment. His thoughts sloshed awkwardly to one side, and then they sloshed awkwardly back to the other side, and nothing helpful emerged from the deluge at all. He rather felt like he was sinking into it, actually.

So he did as he was told. But only for now, because the stupid witch couldn’t order him about even if she was probably right. He was a demon. He did what he liked.

Newt had tiptoed out of the cottage by this point, to see what all the fuss was about. Between the two humans, they managed to pick up the angel and, waddling sideways like an inebriated crab, brought him inside.

They pondered where to put him, like he was a particularly demanding houseplant that needed just the right amount of shade and sun, and settled for the living room sofa because it was closest, and meant the humans didn’t have to lug the limp angel up the stairs.

Crowley just stood there, watching the proceedings with all the usefulness of a piece of superfluous furniture, maybe an old broken umbrella stand, or a bit of modern art that people squinted at for a bit before giving it up for a lost cause.

He did this, this _lurking_, until he was forcibly pushed down into a nearby chair and given a warm glass of brandy by the witch.

Crowley stared into its amber depths, suddenly overcome with melancholy.

Now what? He’d got the angel somewhere safe, or safer, anyway. But Aziraphale was dying, and Crowley had been a fool to think they could do anything about that part. What was a regular run-of-the-mill witch going to do with a bloody dying angel? Bugger all, that was what. Or definitely nothing useful, anyway. Maybe she’d light some sage, or stick a lucky rabbit’s foot up his nose, or something equally ridiculous.

Shit. What had he been thinking. He probably hadn’t been thinking at all, actually, had he. As usual. Who knew if his angel would even wake up again. They could have already said their last words to each other, and Crowley, for the life of him, couldn’t even remember what they had been. Crowley had probably told the angel to shut up or something. Christ, he hadn’t, had he? That’d be just bloody _typical_. And - and Crowley had never got the chance to tell him -

“Ana...thema?”

Crowley snapped his head up, sloshing brandy all down his front.

“Aziraphale, it’s so good to see you awake.”

“Where... good heavens... I can’t recall...”

Wha - wait - _how_ \- Aziraphale was awake. He was _awake_ -somehow - impossibly - and look - look at that! There the bastard was, and _fucking hell_, he was beautiful - blinking sluggish grey eyes from his position, laid out on the witch’s sofa, with his bedraggled head pillowed on a cushion.

Crowley was on his feet in an instant, but his legs were shaking so much that he nearly face planted onto the floor and had to sit back down again.

Anathema was attempting to calm the now fretting angel, who obviously hadn’t expected to wake up inside the witch’s house, surrounded by stupid humans, feeling like shit. “Don’t sit up, just yet. You’re hurt. Let me take a look at you.”

Aziraphale was starting to look increasingly panicked, and his forehead was damp with sweat, “I’m ever so sorry -!”

“Don’t be,” insisted the witch, “there’s nothing to apologise for. Lie still, now.”

“- just - just barging in on you like this... uninvited, and in such a... a sorry state... oh, how dreadfully rude of me. What you must _think_...”

Crowley forced himself to calm, and stood up again, willing his knees to stop knocking together, because bless it all, the angel needed him. He was happy though - ecstatic, even - because yeah, Aziraphale was fretting, and obviously upset, but that was a good thing, that was more like the angel that Crowley knew. Hell, even Aziraphale’s familiar apologetic wittering was in full swing, and bless it if it didn’t sound like bloody music to the demon’s ears, especially after all that godawful silence in the car - holy buggering fuck, Crowley better not be dreaming this, this was - Crowley could _kiss_ the daft old fool. He could snog his angel’s face off.

The demon felt a surge of hope rush through him like an electric current, lighting up his limbs and brain like bulbs on a string.

Aziraphale had one white hand on the witch’s arm and was looking at her with a sudden desperation. “My dear, where’s Crowley? He was with me - I’m - I’m sure of it -”

The demon surely broke the sound barrier, with how quickly he moved to the angel’s side, there was a sharp crack and a burst of light as he crossed the room in a single stride, “Here angel, here, I’m right here. Didn’t go anywhere.” He raised a hand and waggled the fingers in greeting, “‘Lo.”

Aziraphale relaxed immediately at the sight of him, a quivering, relieved smile playing out over his lips and lighting up his eyes, even as a bead of sweat ran down his cheek. “_Crowley,” _he breathed,emotion pooling in those expressive eyes, _“_You’re all right! Oh, thank - thank goodness, thank _goodness_...” he murmured, and then he closed his eyes.

Wha - what the bloody hell was the angel even on about? Of _course_ Crowley was all right. He was a demon, for Christ’s sake. Hellfire couldn’t touch him. Did the blessed idiot even remember what had happened? Crowley had never actually been in any danger, he could’ve basked in those infernal flames all day long and never have gotten so much as an unfortunate tan line.

The angel’s eyes remained closed for longer than the customary blink.

“Oi, keep them open,” the demon prodded, none too gently. Aziraphale obediently opened his eyes, but they were heavy lidded and blinking. He looked so old, so tired, in that moment, that is was honestly one of the most frightening things the demon had witnessed. The wrinkles at the corners of Aziraphale’s eyes, and on his sweating forehead, had deepened with dark shadows, extenuated by the all the soot, and the paleness of his skin wasn’t helping matters at all, and - and there were nasty looking bruises under his eyelids, and his chapped lips were sticking together slightly when he tried to reassure them with a wibbling smile.

He just looked old, all right. And it was horrible.

Aziraphale had always tried to take on the appearance of an older, dapper gentleman, with varying degrees of success. But he did so in that ‘aren’t I trustworthy and wise, but also a tad rumpled, and therefore rather comforting, and wouldn’t you like to tell me your secrets, go on, there’s a dear chap, because I can very much help you my dear, if you let me, oh no, no, of course there’s nothing odd or ethereal about little old me, I assure you, look at my nifty bowtie and quaint reading glasses, nothing to be afraid of here, doesn’t my smile put you at ease? Yes, wonderful, care to have a look at my lovely collection of regency snuffboxes?’, sort of way.

But the angel had never actually, truly, _looked_ old before.

Just did his best approximation of it, and fallen a bit short due to his timeless angelic being that shone through his corporation like the sun through a gap in the curtains. The angel had never once looked like... _this_.

Crowley swallowed heavily, “That’s it, angel. Let’s sit you up properly, and we can have a little chat.”

The sudden change in elevation had the angel coughing again, but thankfully it was short-lived this time. Tiny golden lights escaped his lips, and curled lazily in the air like glow worms, before winking out.

Anathema blanched at the sight, because yeah, Crowley supposed it wasn’t exactly normal, was it? You invite an angel into your house, for a cup of tea, a biscuit maybe, slice of cake, and get a free firework display for your troubles. Might come as a bit of a shock. Bit weird, wasn’t it? Bit frightening too. “What was that?” The witch demanded, eyes wide and searching for answers, “That energy? It felt... celestial.”

Aziraphale had fished a handkerchief out of his breast pocket, looking relieved at finally being able to do so, and was wheezing weakly into it. After a few moments he was able to speak and he did so in an extremely soothing voice, probably because of the fact that everyone around him looked so completely stricken by the unfolding situation. “I, ahem, had a small... mishap, involving some hellfire at the bookshop,” he explained, calmly, “it seems to be... ah, _I_ seem to be... I rather think... I might be in a spot of trouble.”

Then he descended into horrible dry coughs, and the lights couldn’t be contained by the hasty press of his handkerchief, they flew from his mouth with every haggard breath and danced around Anathema’s living room.

One of the larger orbs of light sunk into the sofa and abruptly changed its brown glossy leather into a familiar beige tartan print. A few scattered lights hit an old wine bottle on the coffee table, refilling it immediately, and topping it off with a fat cork, similarly, the used glasses next to it found themselves cleaned and polished to a gleaming sparkle. A dusty old cactus on the windowsill suddenly bloomed obnoxiously, bursting with huge orange and pink flowers. And an old radio on the side table suddenly turned quite unexpectedly into a phonograph, it’s needle skipping over an empty turntable.

Anathema watched all of this cautiously, eyebrows furrowed in concern but cataloguing each of the miraculous events with a flick of her dark eyes.

Newt jolted in surprise as the cup he was holding suddenly found itself turning white and sprouting a pair of angel wings where the handle had been.

One tendril of golden light laced over to Crowley and gently prodded him on the nose. It warmed him to his snakeskin boots, cleaning the grime and healing the hairline cracks from his glasses, and floofing up his hair with static. He held out trembling fingers to see the soot and grubbiness of the hellfire scrubbed clean.

Crowley couldn’t bring himself to speak.

He looked at the angel.

Christ. Well. That certainly hadn’t done him any good. Aziraphale looked so ill, so sickly now, completely unlike his usual unruffled self. His little light display had clearly cost him whatever energy he’d managed to gather back together and he was now leaning forward, elbows on his knees, as if he could no longer hold himself upright.

Crowley had a sudden, horrible, painful realisation, that perhaps he had made a mistake in bringing them both here. The angel had never wanted anyone to worry about him, let alone his newfound human friends who he coddled with tea and books and never mentioned anything bad to, and now Crowley had brought him round for a bloody visit, when the angel was quite obviously barely clinging on to existence.

The angel was no doubt quite upset to be seen like this. The ungrateful bastard.

Hell, and what was it all for, anyway? No one here could help him. Crowley had just made it so that the angel would have to spend his last moments being ogled at by well-meaning useless humans, cleaning up the small cottage with broken bits of himself, and turning everything into fucking tartan.

Crowley should have taken him somewhere else. Somewhere quiet. Where it could be just the two of them, maybe somewhere off in the stars where they wouldn’t be bothered. He could have held the angel then, and told him all the stupid stuff he’d never dared to say before. Well, it was too bloody late for that now. There’d be no kidnapping the angel while the witch was on the prowl, she was a little bit terrifying, and Crowley would probably get his arse zapped by that bloody horseshoe on the way out, as well.

Aziraphale huffed and wheezed for a few moments, and the witch took it all in her stride as she came closer to rub comfortingly at the angel’s back.

Anathema looked to Crowley, who had the sudden urge to scream and tear his hair out and sprout fangs and take a large bite out of Anathema’s stupidly unstylish new tartan sofa and choke to death on it.

_A spot of trouble,_ the angel had said. A spot of fucking trouble. He was dying from hellfire burns to his soul. Dying, for real, no take backs, no paperwork, no miraculous intervention saving him at the last second. Just dying. Dead. Gone. And here the idiot was, sitting as calm as you like, pretending he wasn’t hacking up his life force every few seconds right in front of them.

Anathema set her mouth into a grim determined line. “I’ll put the kettle on. Be right back.”

She left the room in a sweep of her dark dressing gown.

Newt blinked at them from his nervous perch on an arm chair, then slid off of it in a gaggle of incongruous limbs, mumbled some excuse about going to help, and fled.

A few moments later, there was the low hissing sound of a kettle heating up in the kitchen.

.........

Aziraphale hurt. The burn on his neck stung as if the hellfire was still present in the skin, burning away at flesh and bone, at his very being beneath all of the human trappings. It dug its teeth in, and bit down, eating and eating and eating away at him.

He could feel it, even now, sat politely on Anathema’s sofa, and he did his very best to not to collapse over sideways and sob into the cushions.

His back was straight, his hands folded neatly.

It hurt.

It _hurt_.

Good lord, he’d never felt anything like it.

He could cope though, he could cope. It wouldn’t do to worry everyone. It didn’t occur to him that he was being acutely observed by a panicking demon, they didn’t say a word to each other. Aziraphale focused on keeping upright, and schooling his features into anything that didn’t resemble complete agony, and Crowley sat in the spot next to him on the sofa, barely an arm’s breadth away, as still as a statue, the eyes behind his sunglasses wide and wet and staring.

Anathema returned, one hand holding a sizeable leather bag, the strap looped around her wrist, and in the other, a steaming cup. The latter she placed carefully within the angel’s hands, and the cup was warm but not scalding, she must have added a little cold water from the tap to ensure it was the right temperature for sipping. Aziraphale’s eyes nearly welled up. How very thoughtful.

“It’s just honey and lemon,” Anathema explained, “might help with your cough.”

“Most kind of you, thank you.”

Aziraphale cradled it, and took a few tentative sips. He set it on his knee when his hands betrayed him. The honey was sweet, and the lemon tart, and it did indeed soothe his throat from where the hellfire smoke had raked down its sharp nails.

Aziraphale had a soft spot for honey. He liked the idea of bees, and found them quite adorable fuzzy little creatures with a wonderful work mentality. He enjoyed the fruits of their labour on toast of a Sunday morning, with generous helpings of melting butter for good measure, usually with a cup of tea, and if he was lucky, with the company of a certain dark and bitter demon across the tabletop grumbling into a cup of something equally dark and equally bitter. At the gentle memory, the honey went a long way in soothing something other than his throat. And yes, it was a silly thing maybe, possibly, this lilting comforting warmth at the thought of something so mundane and homely, but he welcomed it nonetheless.

Clung to it, even.

He had honey in his tea, and Crowley glowering beside him, and could it really be so bad if both of those things were present?

Anathema unpacked the contents of the leather satchel. It was a medical kit of sorts, with homemade ointments and creams in little brown bottles, all labelled diligently, and there were tight rolls of white bandages, a packet of plasters, antiseptic wipes, medical tape and tiny scissors.

She took the cup from him and placed it on the table.

“I’ll just clean up the burn on your neck, to start with,” She told him, in the manner of a few World War One matrons he had had the pleasure of knowing, and if he remembered correctly, with the air of a distinctly familiar red-haired nanny... that is, extremely strict, but also quite unspeakably kind, “if you could remove your bowtie?”

Aziraphale’s fingers trembled as he undid the buttons on his shirt collar, and slowly, carefully, removed his bowtie. Every movement of his arm sent spasms of pain through his shoulder and neck, and he fought to keep the grimace from his face. By the time he had managed to unthread the material from its loop around his neck he was hot, he was sweating, and he burned, but he felt grateful that Anathema had had the foresight to let him do this himself.

He held the soft tartan in his shaking hands, and noticed that it must have been caught by the tiniest of hellfire embers, the bow itself was scorched black on one side, smelling of sulphur and acrid burnt wool, eaten away like a leaf devoured by a particularly demonic and voracious caterpillar.

Aziraphale mourned it for a few moments, placing gentle fingers on the ruined tartan, while Anathema prepared the necessary items for cleaning his wound with practised movements.

The angel spared a soft glance to the demon beside him, knowing that the only thing that had prevented Aziraphale himself from being devoured by the flames himself, and suffering the same unfortunate demise as his beloved bow tie, was the being sat stiffly beside him. Crowley watched him with his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief as he swallowed.

Oh, how he hated to trouble dear Crowley with all of this.

The demon had saved him, as he always did, and that should have been the end of the matter, shouldn’t it? As it had been countless times before. How awful it was that the damage to his soul was so stark and obvious now, and unable to be explained away, unable to be laughed at as something silly, or smoothed over gently and put into the back of a cupboard to be looked at on a later date.

Aziraphale could no longer offer Crowley the promise that they would both be just fine, that surely it was nothing that a good few bottles of that delightful Cabernet Sauvignon from ‘51 wouldn’t fix, that Aziraphale couldn’t insist that he was most grateful for the demon’s help, for rescuing him out of a rather admittedly sticky situation, and now everything was jolly good, everything was fine, he was quite well, yes, no need to worry my dear, thank you so much.

He didn’t think he could bear the thought of Crowley going through all of that for him, and then having to watch as Aziraphale faded away anyway. It was too cruel.

Perhaps this was all in Her plan, that the angel should die in this way, but he hoped against hope that it wasn’t. He prayed that if he fought hard enough, wished it to be so, that he might stay for a little while longer. Stay with Crowley just that little while longer, please.

It really wouldn’t do to leave the demon like this, in the lurch, as it were. He’d only be upset. Well, of course, he already _was_ upset. Crowley hadn’t said another word since announcing his presence and helping the angel sit upright, a good fifteen minutes ago now, which was always extremely telling. For all of the demon’s usual bluster and scorn, for all of his needling comments and scoffs, he really was a very sensitive creature. A snake, of course, deep down. And like a snake, when truly hurt by something, he withdrew from it all.

Retreated.

And Aziraphale couldn’t bear it, that he should have been the one to incite such melancholy. Crowley looked as though he were in shock. Though the angel didn’t remember too much of the whole debacle, particularly towards the end - and wasn’t that both a new and wholly horrifying experience - he did remember the distinct feeling of safety, cocooned as they both had been in Crowley’s beautiful black wings.

Crowley’s arms around his neck and back, cradling his head to the demon’s chest.

Yes, Aziraphale remembered that, quite clearly.

He had longed to be held like that, by Crowley, for so very long. And was it wrong to have enjoyed the wiry strength in that touch, the promise, the devotion? Even if that gentle touch hadn’t been for anything but as a means of protection, Aziraphale treasured the memory still. He had felt, in that moment of raw desperation and scalding heat, loved.

He had felt so loved.

Oh, Crowley.

Oh - _Ouch_!

Anathema was swift and efficient, but the pain was ever present and Aziraphale was startled out of his woeful musings by it as she began her ministrations.

Good heavens - it _hurt_. 

The first soft dab of the antiseptic wipe had him breathless and his teeth clenched around a startled whine. He immediately flinched away from the tight vicious stinging, but Anathema persisted, cleaning the burn on his neck in deft strokes and applying a cooling ointment containing aloe vera, if the angel’s quick, desperate glance at the label could be trusted. Aziraphale honed in on it intensely, trying to focus on anything but the sharp claws of agony jolting up his neck and into his jawbone.

“Do - do you - ah - make these - these treatments, yourself?” He rasped out, voice as shaky as a newborn foal, “they’re rather clever, if so, I - I was never one for tinctures, myself, but - but - one can appreciate their usefulness, in situations such as these.”

“Old family recipe,” replied Anathema, as she continued to coat the burn.

“Ah,” the angel breathed, a bit too heavily he realised, but it was suddenly impossible to stop, all the air in his lungs was wheezing out of him, and it sounded quite horrible to his own ears. Like someone struggling for breath. Like someone dying. Good Lord, he hoped the others didn’t mind too terribly. It was very unseemly of an angel to make such a noise, “Oh, yes,” he gasped, quite convincingly, “yes, very cooling.”

He could feel the surface level of skin reacting to the gentle cold of the ointment, but it was much like trying to put out a raging bonfire with a thimbleful of water.

And then the bandage. Tape. Aziraphale panted, opening sticky eyes from where they’d been squeezed shut. It throbbed. An incessant drone of pain, as if someone were repeated prodding him with a glow-ended poker, searing mercilessly at his skin. Good gracious, that was awful.

“How are you finding that book, the - the book I - I leant to you?” Aziraphale asked, with as much warmth and interest as he could muster, through those wretched halting breaths, “The - the medicinal and magical uses of herbs, wasn’t it? Bit of a dry read, but ah, very practical, I thought.”

The witch seemed to know that he needed a distraction, and wonderful as she was, indulged him. “It’s been a great help, thanks, we’re growing our own in the window box in the kitchen. Basil, rosemary, sage, and what else was it Newt?”

“Coriander!” Newt squeaked, from somewhere in the vicinity of the armchair, though Aziraphale couldn’t quite get his eyes to focus enough to see him, he sounded most relieved at finally having something to say, “And marjoram.”

“Oh, how lovely,” breathed Aziraphale, struggling now to keep both of his eyes open at the same time. He loved marjoram, a shame it had fallen out of favour in English cooking in recent years. As he recalled, it went particularly well with lamb, “Do... do let dear Crowley take a look at them, won’t you? He’s - he’s ever so wonderful with plants. Truly green-fingered. Always has been.”

At his side, Crowley slowly unbuckled, shoulders slumping forward slightly, but gaze still burning the side of the angel’s face. Maybe even more intently than before.

“I... I have another book,” continued the angel lightly, unthinkingly, “a discourse on soil nutrients, that may prove rewarding, particularly for the herbs, you might like to... oh,” he stopped short, suddenly overcome with a wave of hot, prickling sorrow. “Oh no, I... I don’t suppose I do, rather, I - I had a book... but...” that was right, wasn’t it? The bookshop was no more, and seemingly those books that he had been hoping Anathema might enjoy, had stacked in a neat pile to take with him the next time they met up, had gone along with it.

Oh.

They were all gone now, weren’t they? As he was soon to be. How silly of him, not to remember such a thing.

“Oh... oh dear, so sorry, I’m afraid it’s lost now,” Aziraphale whispered, blinking tiredly, “but ah, there was a wonderful chapter on the application of nitrogen, although I don’t presume to know much on the subject, perhaps Crowley would be a better... would be...” the world darkened for a moment, around the edges, but he blinked it back, suddenly wrong-footed, “My - my apologies, what was I...? Oh, yes. The book, of course, the chapter, yes - I do remember that part quite well. About the nitrogen. I could recount it to you, at - at some point, perhaps. If you would like to hear it.”

He wasn’t quite sure of what he was even saying. The eyes that stared back at him from wobbling faces were far too sad, really, and that simply wouldn’t do. He tried to counteract this odd and unpalatable sorrow that hung in the air between them all, with more words, as he always did, he was quite adept with those, they usually served to put people at ease, but it didn’t seem to be working this time.

Newt audibly sniffed and wiped at his red nose with the sleeve of his jumper.

“I’d like that very much, Aziraphale,” Anathema told him, gently.

Aziraphale offered her a smile, as honest and appreciative as he could make it, eyes shining, clasping his hot, trembling hands around her own.

“My dear,” he told her, but then couldn’t remember what he was going to say next.

Luckily, Anathema just nodded at him as if she understood anyway, the dear dear girl, and replaced her hands with the unfinished cup of honey and lemon tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you’re enjoying this so far :) as always, kudos or comments make me smile! Please let me know your thoughts :D


	4. In which the angel takes a bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, the angel just takes a bath.  
That’s the chapter.  
Please enjoy this incredibly long, slightly perverse, but overall well-meaning, inner monologue from the demon Crowley, as he witnesses this blessed event.

Aziraphale seemed a little better. Not that that was saying much, because he’d literally appeared dead before, and was now only marginally less corpse-like, owing to the fact that he was awake.

Whatever the witch had given him to drink had helped to soothe his throat, and now the coughs had diminished to intermittent, breathy rattles. At least he no longer spoke in broken sentences, where every other word was punctuated by the angel hacking up a lung and then apologising profusely about it. Hooray for small mercies, Crowley supposed.

Aziraphale still looked wrung out, though. There was an oddly grey look about him, as if his colours had been muted in the wash, mixed in with that one nefarious red sock that got wedged in the drum of the washing machine, that blotched his white skin in places, and mottled a garish claret up his neck.

He was feverish still, and sweating, and the burns on his neck were already weeping through the bandages that the witch had applied not moments ago.

And... well. It was obvious to everyone.

They could all tell.

The angel was in pain.

Crowley could see it lingering around the wrinkles of soft eyes, and in the tightening of pink lips. He saw it in the trembling of manicured hands, and the soft pants of hot breath that the angel didn’t even need.

Aziraphale was in pain, but he didn’t want them to know it. There was a wan, fixed smile on his face that was oddly wonky at one end and his fingers shook so much that he was unable to hold his teacup for more than a few seconds at a time, placing it on the table top between cautious sips.

“Angel,” Crowley finally managed to say, through the quagmire of his thoughts, finally forming his lips around the words, “if you’ve got any bright ideas, now’s the time to tell us.”

Please, for the love of anyone at all, let Aziraphale have thought of something. The angel had always been the one with the plans that actually went right, some of the time, anyway.Or they went comically wrong, but a certain demon swooped in at the last minute to make it go right again. Call it demonic intervention, maybe it was even Her way of meddling, who knew, but the angel usually got out of any tight scrapes he had blindly wheedled his way into. Crowley’s own plans, on the other hand, always had a way of coming back to bite him in the arse sooner or later, which might have something more to do with his general incompetence at doing nefarious evil deeds than anything else.

Anyway, Crowley had done his bit, the dramatic rescue bit, the heroic bit, now he should be able to sit back and feel relieved, right?

Right?

Only this wasn’t relief, he was pretty sure, nope, more like sheer bloody minded terror actually - panic, definitely. Shock. Crowley’s brain had melted back in the burning bookshop, like so much plastic in the microwave. Too much heat had frazzled it until it was nothing but a twisted limp of deformed goo, that had partially dribbled out of his ears. No good trying to use the bloody thing for plans, he could barely even string a coherent sentence together. In his poor melted brain, the words ‘Aziraphale’ and ‘what’ and ‘fuck he’s hurt, he’s hurt and he’s not going to get better’ stuck together in a hard fused plasticky lump and refused to budge.

“Hmm,” the angel murmured gently in response to his verbal prodding, but he didn’t look up, “actually, my dear... I’m not sure that there’s anything more that can be done.”

No, don’t say _that, _angel. Anything but _that_.

Aziraphale attempted to fix his smile, but if anything, it looked even worse. A horrible, fake thing, that he usually reserved for visiting archangels. His eyes were glimmering but it wasn’t with happiness, “I am most grateful for your valiant efforts, and for your hospitality, really, I’m very grateful. I feel...” he put a trembling hand to his chest, “well... I certainly feel much more comfortable, now, thank you.”

Comfortable.

_Comfortable_.

Well, shit. If that wasn’t confirmation that they were fucked, Crowley didn’t know what was.

“What are you talking about?” Anathema asked, then when Aziraphale did nothing but smile blankly, she directed the same to Crowley, a little desperately, “What is he talking about? There must be something we can do. Someone explain this to me right now, or I’m going to go mad. I’m not above curses, you know.”

The angel stared mournfully into the dregs at the bottom of his teacup, and that stupid smile plastered on his face did nothing to cover it up.

“Hellfire’s the only thing that can kill an angel,” Crowley explained, hoarsely, determined to get the words out even if they physically pained him, because he may not like the witch that much, but he supposed if she was going to harbour a dying angel in her house she deserved to know what had happened. “Some - some _twat_ burnt the whole bloody bookshop down with it, and I - I tried to get him out of there in time, but...” he ended with a frustrated growl that could have been something else entirely, something wretched, gritting his teeth at the unfairness of it all.

Shit.

He dug his fingers under his sunglasses and into his eyes. Because fuck this. Why had he brought them here again? So the humans could watch a demon grieve?

“Crowley, now, stop that,” the angel admonished, “this is hardly your fault. You protected me, my dear.” There was a hot hand on his knee, and Crowley stared at it numbly through the gaps in his fingers, then he chanced a peek up to the angel’s pink face. Aziraphale was gazing at him with concern in those expressive eyes, “You saved me.”

“Sssaved you,” Crowley hissed, because that was the final straw. His tongue forked and his eyes grew a wild vicious yellow, “Ssssaved you?! Right, right yeah, just so you could peg it later on? Jussst sssso you could _die anyway?_ Fucking _great_, well done me.” He suddenly clutched at the angel’s hand that had rested gently on his knee, until he could almost feel the bones creak under the pressure.

What was the point? What was the fucking point? If the angel was just going to die anyway, if all he’d done was prolong the angel’s pain for a bit longer, so he could sit there and sip on his tea and pretended he wasn’t in _agony_ \- maybe - maybe it would have been kinder to have just let him...

No.

Fuck no. No, he’d never have been able to leave Aziraphale there to burn, he just wished he’d been quicker, been able to do something.

A silence fell, like the lingering ash from a burned bookshop.

Crowley was acutely aware of the angel’s gaze, soft and sorrowful, and full of something that he didn’t deserve. The humans were shifting uncomfortably. 

He... he hadn't meant to say all that. He hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

“I’ll uh, go get the guest bedroom ready,” said Newt suddenly. Crowley looked up at him and saw that he was currently wilting under Anathema’s pointed glare and raised eyebrow.

Guest bedroom. Huh. Guess that meant Crowley’s outburst hadn’t ruined everything. 

The angel at his side flustered.

“Oh, I - I wouldn’t want to impose,” started Aziraphale, looking like he very much didn’t want to impose actually, but that he was also quite aware that there wasn’t anywhere else for him to go. “You’ve already been so kind, I’d hate to inconvenience you any further.” He looked torn, for a moment, wet eyes flitting between them all. Crowley had the feeling that the angel wanted nothing more than to curl up somewhere alone and conk out, and he might as well do it in the witch’s guest bedroom.

“You’re staying,” decided Anathema, leaving no room for protest. 

Aziraphale protested anyway, because he surely had a death wish. “Oh, no, really, I - I couldn’t possibly -”

“I wasn’t asking,” said Anathema, and Crowley’s respect for her went up a couple of notches. “I’ll run you a bath first, how does that sound? Clean off some of the um, soot,” she continued, pragmatically, “it’ll make you feel worlds better.”

“Sounds good,” Crowley surprised himself by saying, “right, angel?”

“If you’re - you’re quite _sure_, you wouldn’t mind?” Aziraphale waited a beat, then two, probably in the hopes that the witch would allow him any leeway. When she didn't budge an inch, he visibly deflated, “Then, yes. Yes, thank you, that... that does sound rather agreeable,” said the angel, with open defeat on his face. Then he turned, groggily, to the demon with a small hopeful look, “Would you... be so kind as to help me, my dear?”

The demon swallowed, audibly, “_Me?_” He puffed out in a small squeak of breath. Then realised that Aziraphale had little other options to speak of. He’d hardly want to ask the humans for help bathing, and he could barely sit upright by himself. “Uh. Uh, yeah. ‘Course angel, yeah. No problem.”

Aziraphale smiled, this time it was smaller, and honest. His eyes were deep set with purpled hollows, “Thank you.”

The witch started up the stairs, presumably to run the bath.

“Right. Well, then,” murmured Crowley, awkwardly.

Aziraphale blinked tiredly at him.

There were whole worlds of things left unsaid between them now. That raw desperation they had both felt, trapped in that blistering heat of the burning bookshop, the way they had clung together, as if the only thing in existence that mattered to either one of them was the other, it was - it was too much to fucking deal with, is what it was.

So, they wouldn’t deal with it. Crowley was the master of shoving things under the carpet when he didn’t want to think about them. Except his carpet was more like an inter-dimensional void, and when he shoved things under there, they didn’t come back out again.

“S’pose we ought to...” the demon trailed off with a half shrug, and then went to offer his hand for the angel to take to pull him up off the sofa, only to realise he already had the angel’s hand under his own. The angel’s fingers were curled warmly atop his knee.

He gave them a timid squeeze.

Aziraphale looked at him, eyes pained but endlessly grateful. It looked like he sure as Hell wasn't ready to talk about anything either, and all right, then. They could do that. The angel turned his hand slightly in Crowley’s grip, lacing their fingers together, and squeezed back.

If Crowley dwelled too long on it, he could still feel the angel’s hot breaths against his neck under the mantle of his wings. So, he tried not to think about it too much, because here Aziraphale was, not dead yet, holding his hand sweetly, and he needed a bath, and then bed, and some fucking miracles and Crowley would see to it that he got exactly that.

He helped Aziraphale stand.

Getting up the stairs was easier said than done. If Crowley had any strength left he would’ve snapped his fingers and miracled them up to the bloody bathroom, but he, like the angel, was wrung out like a damp towel and his legs were all wobbly and he didn’t want to push it. Besides, he’d go easy on the magic until they knew for certain who had tried to kill the angel, they didn’t want to be traced back here before they were ready to retaliate.

Anathema helped, popping back down from the landing, her hands wet from running the bath water. She ended up coaxing the both of them up. Crowley didn’t know when his impression of her had changed from ‘that witch that sometimes takes up too much of angel’s time, that should be taken up by him instead’, in other words, a potential rival for the angel’s affections, that should be tolerated because the angel had developed a soft spot for her, but also hissed at, at every available opportunity. Now she was just ‘Anathema, eh, she’s probably all right, actually,’.

It probably had something to do with the care the witch took as she guided Aziraphale up the steps, not rushing him, not pitying him, just offering assistance when needed and asking him about that book she’d borrowed on occult summoning circles to distract him.

She wasn’t so bad. Maybe.

When they got to the bathroom, Anathema put an armful of fresh clothes on top of the closed toilet seat, and plonked a hefty amount of fuzzy looking towels on the radiator.

“Right,” she said, and Crowley just then noticed how tired she looked. There were bags under her eyes and her hair was starting to frizz on top. She gave them a satisfied nod, “It’s four in the morning, so, I’m going to bed. The guest room’s just across the landing. If you need me, for any reason, wake me.”

Aziraphale clutched at her hands and thanked her the way only he could, with a wide grateful smile, and crinkling eyes, and bid her a good night and pleasant dreams. There was no blessing attached to the words, Crowley noticed, no spark of divine interference like there usually would be. Aziraphale usually couldn’t help himself with doling out blessings, but this time there was nothing more in his quiet voice than just the normal well meaning fluff.

Crowley merely grunted, but the witch didn’t seem to mind. Her look seemed to entrust him with the angel’s care, and he felt the weight of it as she looked between the two of them once more and then closed the bathroom door as she left.

Aziraphale fumbled with his waistcoat for a solid minute, before Crowley intervened. The angel’s fingers weren’t shaking so much as they were uncooperative, and heavy with fatigue.

“Hands off,” Crowley snapped, without his usual bite, “you’ll take bloody _hours_ at this rate, and I’m tired. Leave it to me, angel.” He moved the bundle of clothes down onto the floor and sat the angel on the toilet seat to better undress him without the two of them falling over.

“Do be careful,” protested Aziraphale, quite pathetically.

“_Do be careful,_” Crowley mimicked back, with a disdainful curl of his lip. But he was. He was so fucking careful.

He touched the angel’s shoes first, those old brown leather brogues, soft and worn and now scuffed at the toes through the layer of previously pristine polish, the left was scraped badly on one side, the leather jagged there, and both shoes were dappled with ash and dirt. Crowley unlaced them with deft fingers and slipped them gently off to set against the wall by the sink. The angel was wearing matching argyle socks. Sssatan help him, he wasn’t touching those.

The waistcoat he undid cautiously, there was dried blood all down the front of it, sticking in the balding velvet and crusting along the ancient buttons. It was one of the easier things to take off, and didn’t jostle the angel too much. Crowley folded it gently, the velvet soft under his hands, then he unbuttoned the pale blue shirt beneath, the collar of which was already undone where Aziraphale had removed his bow tie downstairs.

The shirt’s cotton fabric was singed in places, particularly around the neckline, and blackened with streaks of soot and sweat. Crowley’s fingers were quick and methodical, making short work of the shirt in case he lost his nerve halfway through. And he was definitely not blushing, though it looked as though the angel was, but that was probably due more to the fever than anything else.

Well, he could safely say that Aziraphale’s beloved clothes were ruined. Nothing could get the stink of the hellfire out, not even the purest divine miracle, Crowley knew that from experience, and the angel seemed to realise it too, as he mournfully traced a hand over each item as Crowley removed it, as if to say goodbye.

Well. What was he looking so melancholy about. It was about bloody time the idiot updated his wardrobe anyway.

Maybe when all this was over, Crowley could treat his angel to a new suit. Or, more likely, an old one. They could raid the Museum of London’s famed garment and textile collection, for something from the 16th century, with ruffles and silk or satin, a nice long coat or a frilly sleeved shirt. Or they could pop to a vintage fair and inspect their range of twee little bow ties and embroidered waistcoats.

There was sure to be something that the angel would like just as much as his old ensemble. Something that had been just as well cared for, that might even make him light up with delight to see. Something with regency buttons, or crushed velvet, or even tartan if Crowley couldn’t steer him away from it in time, fuck it, he’d even allow him a bit of tweed if it made the angel smile.

Maybe.

All right, not the tweed. _Anything_ but tweed.

Or maybe the angel would pick out something plain and comfortable, that had an excellent mileage, something that would last through... all the years to come.

Right. Yeah. ‘Course. That would fucking happen.

Crowley pressed his lips together for a moment and breathed out through his nose. They were close enough, now, he and the angel, to share a breath. Crowley gently undid the tiny white buttons at the wrists of the ruined shirt, and slipped the angel’s trembling arms through the sleeves. Aziraphale winced at the strain it put on his bandaged neck to move the shoulder even the littlest bit, but made no sound of discomfort. Crowley deftly folded the shirt and set it atop the waistcoat. Even though they both knew those bloody things were destined for the bin.

Aziraphale was looking at him now, naked from the waist up, and Crowley couldn’t bare to hold his gaze. The angel made a soft sound in his throat and leaned forward suddenly. His hot forehead touched against Crowley’s.

They didn’t say anything. Just revelled in the fact that against all odds, here they both were. Huddled together again, in a witch’s bathroom of all places. In this one small moment, this little pocket of time, they were here and everything was fine.

And bugger it all.

Crowley wanted to kiss the angel.

He’d never wanted anything more, in that tender moment, than to close the scant distance between them and press their lips together. What would it feel like, he wondered. Hot, probably. A bit wet. The angel was feverish, after all. He could find out, if he just inched that tiny bit closer, he could taste that little dimple of sweat that had gathered on Aziraphale’s upper lip. Just lick it. That wasn’t weird. Could ease his sadness with soft kisses, on his lips, his plump cheeks, his silly old upturned nose. Maybe give him a little nip, so he’d squeak out an indignant _‘Crowley!’_ and be completely scandalised at his audacity.

But it wouldn’t be right, would it? The angel was hurt, he was tired, and he was only seeking comfort in an old friend. Crowley wouldn’t push him, even as he wet his lips and thought _fuck, fuck, fuck,_ how much he wanted to kiss the blessed angel.

Crowley let out a frustrated breath, that ghosted over Aziraphale’s lips, and then he slowly lifted his head up to press a brief brush of his closed mouth against the angel’s fevered brow.

Aziraphale watched him with eyes that saw everything, all the good things and the bad, all the gripes and the pettiness, he saw all that Crowley was, and trusted him anyway. He was a pretty stupid bastard for doing that, really. By all rights, the angel should be scared of him, or at least mildly perturbed, and he would be, if he could see the kind of sordid things that were currently playing out in the demon’s head.

Right, enough of this bollocks.

Crowley got up from where he’d been kneeling on the cold tiled floor and - oh _hell_, heaven, fuck - Aziraphale was attempting to unbutton his own beige trousers, and yeah, okay, that was too much, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t want to watch that. So, Crowley turned his back to observe the water in the bath, then fussed over the towels and rummaged through the tiny mirrored cabinet to take his mind off things.

There was nothing incriminating in there, unfortunately, no blackmail material, just a bunch of toothpaste and normal human rubbish. He half expected it to be full of potions or pickled frogs or something. No such luck. He entertained himself by squeezing the toothpaste tube right in the middle, rearranging a few prescription medicines and unpopping the caps on a few bottles. There, that oughta do it. Bit of harmless mischief to make himself feel better. Aziraphale calmed himself down by helping little old ladies cross the road and away from his bookshop, Crowley calmed when he caused minor inconveniences to helpful witches.

He turned his attention to the bathwater again, once it was clear the angel was taking his sweet time about the whole trousers business, and pfff, the poor excuse for a bath didn’t look anything like what the angel would enjoy. Where were the bubbles? And the bath salts, and decadent perfumed oils? And the candles? And the flutes of perfectly cold champagne, the dainty dark chocolates? Okay, so the last two were probably overkill, but would definitely make the angel happy.

Crowley blobbed some purple viscous gel into the water from one of the containers he’d found while rummaging about in the cabinet. Lavender, probably, it smelt a bit like old people, but it was supposed to have a calming effect, right? He swished his hand about in the water to encourage some bubbles. The resulting timid mass floated above the water like a rapidly dissolving cloud, looking a bit sad really. Maybe ten bubbles, close knit, more a whitish scum on the surface than anything else, not worthy of the angelic skin that was soon to grace it with its presence, that was for sure. He glared at them, daring them to wilt as surely as he’d ever glared at his plants.

And there were no bloody candles to speak of, not anywhere, he’d even peeked into the laundry hamper, and the stack of toilet rolls - seriously, what kind of witch didn’t even have any bloody candles? Maybe they were all in use in some nefarious purpose, like an altar or circle or something, but still.

She called herself a practitioner of occult arts, pfff.

Crowley heard the shuffling sound of the angel standing up and risked a glance up from where he had been scowling at the inadequate swirl of dwindling bubbles, and noticed that a pair of grubby once-beige trousers had been added to the pile of clothes, he looked away from that too as the angel presumably added a pair of pants and his unrolled socks.

“Ready, angel?” He murmured, keeping his voice low.

“Yes,” came a breath at his shoulder, “quite, ah, how should we...?”

_Do it quickly, and don’t you fucking dare sneak a peak at his - at his anything - literally anything, _he told himself firmly,_ or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill me. Whatever. And for Christ’s sake stop thinking about that, you know what. Yes, that. _That_. I said stop thinking about it! He’s an invalid. You really do belong in Hell if you even think of taking advantage of this situation in any way shape or form, you horrible, vile, evil, wicked thing._

“If you’re amenable,” said the angel, and oh, Crowley was _amenable_ all right, “I think I might require your assistance getting in,” confided the angel, who Crowley still, for some reason, hadn’t looked directly at, “I find myself a trifle unsteady on my feet.”

_Listen brain,_ Crowley jabbed a metaphorical finger at it, and growled in no uncertain terms, because enough was enough, _if you don’t stop thinking about... about _that_. I’m going to stick a hand blender right up my nostril and whizz you up like cheap pate. Do you hear me?_

Crowley steadfastly put one arm under Aziraphale’s armpit, while the angel’s arm curled around the demon’s shoulders. The angel dipped a dainty toe into the water and then recoiled so much that Crowley nearly dropped the stupid bugger.

“Oh! Oh, good gracious!” He wailed, flailing his hands.

“What the _fuck_, angel - _stop wriggling _or I’ll drop you!”

“Then unhand me, at once! I’ll simply go straight to bed instead, yes, ah, yes, that sounds like a much better idea, no need for this ridiculous charade.”

“_Angel_. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Aziraphale leaned against the sink. “You can’t expect me to go in there,” insisted the angel, pleadingly, “it’s freezing!”

“It is _not_,” snapped the demon, wrangling the angel back upright, “You’ve just got a fever, you blessed idiot. Everything feels cold to you.”

Aziraphale was shaking his head now, quite adamantly, “No, no. Surely, that can’t be right, no, if you must insist upon me entering that wretched tub, it shall need to be a good deal warmer.”

Crowley glared. “Get in.”

“I shall do no such thing.”

“Get _in_, angel.”

“At least have the decency to check the temperature, Crowley, please.”

“I already checked it,” growled Crowley, “it’s fine. Now. _Get. In._”

“But it’s too _cold! _I’ll catch _pneumonia_.”

“Angel -”

“Crowley, _please_ -”

“You can’t catch pneumonia from a lukewarm bath, you - you _stupid_ \- you can’t catch pneumonia _at all!_ Now get the sodding heaven in that bloody tub angel, before I _throw_ you in there!”

Aziraphale pouted. Then huffed. And then he gingerly, shiveringly, and not without further complaint, stepped into the bath under his own steam, latching onto Crowley for support, and leaning on him quite a bit, actually.

For his part, the demon helped lower the angel into the tub, as if he were lowering something precious and liable to break, because he was, he was, and _God-Sssatan-Damnitall_ he was as careful as careful can be, and yeah, okay, he was visibly sweating, with wide yellow eyes darting all over the bloody place.

The demon looked desperately at everything else but the angel’s body, up to the dilapidated shower head, the row of shampoo and conditioner bottles, the small bulbous loofah on a rope that dangled on a small plastic hook, the little ramshackle window with its patterned smoky glass, fogged slightly with condensation.

Crowley had put his glasses back on, and in the end, had even clenched his eyelids shut behind them, because some things were sacred, all right, and Aziraphale was one of them.

He’d seen the angel naked before, yeah. Of course he had. They’d spent millennia together, after all. But that had been ages ago, lifetimes ago, before Aziraphale had felt the need to cover every conceivable patch of skin with soft, modest clothing. He chose to present himself that way, he took comfort in it. And all right. The angel probably didn’t mind Crowley seeing him like this, he didn’t appear to be uncomfortable or embarrassed, he was trusting in a way that spoke of pain and a deep aching exhaustion. He was trusting because he probably didn’t mind much about anything anymore.

But Crowley _did_.

He would give Aziraphale the dignity he deserved, even when the angel himself would never ask for it.

When his angel was seated semi-comfortably in the bath, Crowley allowed himself to open his eyes more than a squint. The angel was flushed pink, and he was shaking so much that the water trembled around him. Crowley carefully eased him back against the edge of the tub, gently, gently, and the angel lay for a moment with his eyes closed, the water lapping at his skin as the shivering subsided.

“It’s... it’s awfully... c-cold,” accused the angel, between chattering teeth, with his eyes still closed.

Crowley wanted to press a kiss against each of those bruised eyelids.

_Oi. Inappropriate. Stop it._

He almost said, _you’re burning up, angel,_ but the words died in his throat, because that was too on the nose, curse his melted brain. So, he merely shifted slightly, knelt as he was at the side of the bath on the little knobbly mat.

“S’good for you, stop whinging about it,” he settled on, and the corner of the angel’s lip curled up in response.

Crowley washed the angel’s hair with some of the weird herbal shampoos the witch had clustered at the side of the bath underneath the electric shower. Rosemary and mint, or something. He flared his nostrils. It didn’t suit Aziraphale, really. But it was clean and it lathered up well, and he got to touch the angel’s hair when he used it. Crowley tried not to let his fingers linger too long, but it was hard when the angel relaxed so effortlessly into his touch, looking careworn and sleepy and content as Crowley massaged the suds in with gentle, soothing fingers.

And really, you couldn’t blame a demon if he spent a little too long touching those soft wet curls. They were smoothed straight under the flow of the water when rinsed, gloriously white beneath the grime, but began to coil up again almost immediately once Crowley tangled his fingers through them, and used a fluffy towel for good measure, to tousle the damp curls.

He was careful not to get bandage on the angel’s neck wet, the towel catching any stray drips of water and soap.

And soon, the soot and ash and blood and sweat had all been washed away, and there was the newly scrubbed angel, looking adorably sleepy and pink.

The bath had been full of lukewarm, tepid water, in an attempt to cool Aziraphale’s heated skin, but it didn’t remain that way for long. The water scolded Crowley’s fingers after a scant few minutes, and his sunglasses fogged up, Aziraphale’s body heating the bath until near boiling point. Crowley said nothing about this strange phenomenon, just turned the cold tap on by the angel’s feet and let it run, draining off the steaming water as he did so.

Fuck it, it wasn’t as if he had to pay the water bill.

A few snaps of his fingers would help to cool the water down, as well, but only temporarily, and there was that no miracles thing to think about, so he refrained for the most part. He’d just get the angel cleaned up quickly, and then they’d get him to lie down somewhere nice and cold, open the window maybe, bit of a breeze, that would help. Probably. Couldn’t do any harm.

The only sounds were the soft ripples of water as they touched against the walls of the tub, and the steady drip of the cold tap. Aziraphale had his head leaned backwards, his lips parted slightly and eyes closed.

“Angel,” Crowley prodded him, “you ready to get out? Or you want to stay in there and get extra prune-y?”

“I suppose I’m quite ‘prune-y’ enough,” mused the angel, sleepily.

“Mmyeah, yeah, but you’re a true hedonist, ‘member that time in Rome? I don’t think you left that bathhouse for a whole month. I’ve known you to spend way longer than this just luxuriating.”

The water sloshed a bit as Aziraphale tilted his head to regard the demon with a spark in those grey eyes, “Well, that may be, but this is hardly _luxurious_,” pointed out the angel with a small smirk, poking at the single bubble that remained on the surface of the water.

“You ungrateful bastard. I worked hard on that bubble,” Crowley protested, “Oi, don’t do that, you’ll - you popped it. You _popped it_. You utter git, I worked on that for ages, slaved away over here getting the bath just the way you like it, ‘cause fuck knows that witch couldn’t get it right, and this - _this_ is how you repay me?”

Aziraphale dimpled, cheeks rosy. He let out a small breathy giggle, “It’s quite the most pathetic excuse for a luxurious bath I’ve ever had the misfortune to sit in,” beamed the angel, because he was a bastard.

“Oh, oh - I’m _sorry_. Sorry it’s not up to your impossibly high angelic standards!” Crowley continued with relish, buoyed by the giggle as if he were a kite, and the angel’s laughter a gentle breeze, “Not my fault the witch didn’t even have any bloody candles.”

Aziraphale eyed him with a hopelessly fond expression, and Crowley didn’t know what to do with it, “... You would have lit candles for me?” He breathed, wonderingly.

“No,” Crowley sniffed, “‘course not. Bloody candles, as if I would - fffff, don’t be stupid, angel.” He didn’t mention the other things he had wanted to do, there was no point giving the angel further ammunition. The idiot had already started to glow faintly with gratitude.

“Well, although I do appreciate the sentiment, I think it’s probably for the best that you didn’t find any,” said Aziraphale, gently, “I don’t really wish to be anywhere near an open flame for a while yet. Silly of me, perhaps.”

Crowley leaned his chin on the lip of the tub. He wasn’t touching that admission with a fucking barge pole. “Let’s get you out of there, before you turn into one big wrinkle.”

Aziraphale, graciously, acquiesced.

Getting the angel out of the bath was another thing entirely.

Crowley was ready with a large towel, but the angel was so tired that he almost collapsed against the demon when attempting to stand, and there was a few seconds of awkward fumbling, a slide of hot wet skin, an angel’s cheek on his shoulder dampening his own shirt, before Crowley managed to wrap the towel around Aziraphale properly and plonk him back down atop the closed toilet seat, where he sat, shaking, and clutching the corners of the towel with pink fingers.

He was dripping onto the tiled floor. And his legs were poking out. And his eyes were unfocused. And that wouldn’t do, would it?

Crowley plopped another towel on top of the angel’s head for good measure, and Aziraphale didn’t even protest as the demon rubbed it obnoxiously this way and that, trying to illicit a response.

Eventually there was a hot damp hand around the demon’s wrist and a contrite, albeit slightly muffled, “Yes, yes, all right, that’s quite enough of _that_! I think you’ll find that I’m quite dry now, thank you, you impertinent creature.”

Phew, for a second there, the demon had been worried.

Crowley removed the towel with a grin, and Christ on a swan-shaped pedalo, he’d mussed up the angel’s curls so much that Aziraphale resembled a dandelion gone to seed. All static white fluff. It was, frankly, adorable, especially when the angel made a small noise of outrage and attempted to flatten it back down, to no avail. Crowley ran his hand under the tap and smoothed it through the angel’s hair before he could think better about it, and he didn’t look at the angel while he was doing it. Not one bit.

The demon dutifully helped the angel into a pair of Newt’s pyjamas that the witch had laid out. They were too long in the leg, but thankfully apparently baggy enough on the hapless human to not be too snug on the slightly plumper angel. Aziraphale looked comfortable enough anyway. Crowley knew that he’d need all the energy he could get for later on, there was no point in wasting it on frivolous pyjama procuring miracles now.

The witch had left another pair of pyjama bottoms too, presumably for the demon to use, they were dark navy and slimmer of fit than the ones he’d decided were destined for Aziraphale. There was an old t-shirt too, with a faded looking Star Wars logo on it, that must have been one of Newt’s. As hilarious as it would have been to coerce the angel into it, it looked a bit too small, and he didn’t have the heart to tease the angel too much when he looked... well, like that. All exhausted and rumpled and ill. It just took all the fun out of it. What was the point if Aziraphale couldn’t get him back with a passive-aggressive tongue lashing or a deviously petty prank of his own devising? What was the point of a wile without an angel to thwart it? Exactly. No point at all.

And - and, even worse, what if the angel didn’t even notice what he’d been dressed in? What if Aziraphale just went to bed in a ratty old, skin-tight, star wars t-shirt and didn’t even blood moan about it?

Nope, no way. Couldn’t stomach that, so. Yeah. Anyway, no one was wearing the dratted thing, because the demon himself certainly wasn’t going to. Crowley wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight. Or any night. Not until they sorted this shit storm out. It just wasn’t safe.

The demon got down on his knees and rolled the angel’s pyjamas bottoms up a little at the ankle, because it wouldn’t do for Aziraphale to trip over the long hems. His fingers brushed accidentally against the hot soft skin of the angel’s foot.

Ungghh. That was a mistake.

Look at those.

Angel toes.

Just _look_ at them. Slightly pink from the heat of the bath water, and soft soft soft as anything, he’d bet his damned existence on it. Was that a weird thing to think? Prob’ly. Probably was, wasn’t it? Yeah. Must be. But hell, who wouldn’t look at those glorious, damp, pink toes, slightly wrinkled from their time soaking, but still plump as little grapes - who wouldn’t look at them and want to touch them? Just the littlest bit? Or, more specifically, want to _tickle_ them? Because, damn it all, he was a demon, in the end, and it was definitely demonic, wasn’t it, toe tickling?

Special circle of hell reserved for toe ticklers.

Sssatan, he needed to stop thinking about this, right now.

Would be demonic of him, though, wouldn’t it? Could probably get away with it, couldn’t he? The angel was probably very ticklish, sensitive, even. All over, not just on his feet. Well, how could he not be - this was Aziraphale after all, the most sensitive of all of God’s creatures. The angel greeted every sensory experience with complete rapture and reverence, as if every morsel of food that passed his lips were divine, every concerto worthy of standing ovation, every play a complete and utter fucking delight. Even bloody Hamlet. Aziraphale was so... responsive to things.

To tickle this angel, this particular angel, would be nothing short of torture.

Yes, if the demon put it like that, it sounded like he didn’t have much say in the matter. It was all a bit inevitable, really. Crowley was bound to tickle those tempting toes sooner or later, it was in his very nature, as a former resident of hell, and it wasn’t his fault if the latent demonic proclivity towards torture suddenly reared its ugly head. He could hardly be blamed for it, just as Aziraphale couldn’t be blamed for going gooey over the sight of tiny ducklings.

Crowley could just shrug and say, _Whoops, sorry angel. Demon, remember? Instincts, you know? Hellish impulses left over from my time in the sulphur pits. Can’t be helped._

Of course, Crowley would most likely get kicked in the face by the shrieking angel for his trouble. And well, that’d serve him bloody right, wouldn’t it?

“Crowley...?” came a gentle voice from above, “Is something the matter, my dear?”

And ohhh, fuck... yep, he’d been staring at the angel’s feet for the better part of five minutes, hadn’t he. Christ’sss ssssake. He had it bad.

“No. ‘Course not.” Crowley straightened with a sniff, squaring his shoulders as if daring the angel to say another fucking word about it. “Come on, angel, let’s get you to bed.”

_And you’ll tuck him in, _thought Crowley darkly, _and definitely not clamber in after him, all right? You’ll leave him the fuck alone. That’s the last thing he needs right now, a bloody demon fawning all over him, slithering up next to him in bed, rubbing at his soft belly, cooling down his hot feet with snakey cold ones. Oooof, you’re pathetic, aren’t you? See one fucking toe, and you’re bloody gone._

_Just imagine what would have happened if you’d ogled his naked body in the bath like you really wanted to._

“Crowley,” a gentle touch on his arm, “my dear, I think I can manage if you’re, ah, somewhat preoccupied, I mean, if there’s something on your mind?”

“No, no I’m fine. Fine. Just uh, sss’nothing. I got this angel, come on.” He put an arm around the angel’s waist and Aziraphale diligently laid a gentle hand on his shoulder for balance. They shuffled out of the warm steam of the bathroom and into the cool air of the landing.

It was clear that Aziraphale was tired. He was unsteady on his feet, and after only a few steps into their walk to the bedroom he stopped to catch his breath and coughed, painfully, into his palm. For his efforts, a twinkle of light twined around his fingertips and blinkered out.

Crowley watched it all with a stiff fascination. Even dying bits of Aziraphale were beautiful. Like fading stars.

The angel straightened and cleared his throat. And Crowley wanted to say something, wanted to tell him that it would be all right and not to be so melodramatic because that was his job, but the angel just looked so exhausted, like a well placed insult would knock him off his feet. So, the demon settled for taking Aziraphale’s arm gently, and slouching over slightly to put it over his taller shoulders. The angel leant into the half embrace easily, feeling heavy and hot to the touch. Crowley snaked his arm tighter around the angel’s waist, and supported him the rest of the way to the bedroom.

Aziraphale was almost asleep by the time they finally got to the small guest room at the back of the cottage, eyelids drooping alarmingly and mouth growing slack. Crowley unashamedly stared at him. He’d never known the angel to sleep. It was really something to see him so pliable and soft, and so completely out of it. The closest he’d ever come to looking like this was when he was drunk, and still he was always thinking, always analysing, always using that bright quicksilver intelligence underneath the slurring and bright giggles, he was still alert. But now the angel was lethargic, and clearly not thinking at all, as he let himself be practically carried. The angel’s face was so close to the demon’s that he could feel the prickle of otherworldly heat that seeped out of the white skin, it was like lugging a bloody furnace around. All that Aziraphale was, was burning up like so many books thrown on a fire.

Crowley settled the angel into the middle of the bed and drew the light duvet up around him. Aziraphale wiggled a little until he lay primly up against the pillows and headboard. He folded his hands neatly into his lap.

“My dear, would you please stop looking at me like that,” breathed the angel, looking impossibly miffed, even as his eyes tried to slip down in slumber.

Crowley shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers and scowled. “Like what?”

“Like I’m liable to... to keel over, at any moment.”

_Aren’t you? _The demon wanted to say. _You can’t see yourself. You don’t understand._

“Oh,” Aziraphale whined petulantly, closing his eyes fully and turning away, “stop it, you silly old serpent.”

Crowley didn’t deign that with a response, because he wasn’t even looking at the angel anyway, and didn’t know what the idiot was harping on about. He had the world’s best poker face. Usually. Even if, after all these years, it didn’t work on the angel anymore.

He grunted at the pillows until they fluffed themselves up enough to be worthy of the ethereal curls that now lay upon them like a slightly damp, very fluffy halo.

“Crowley... you must be tired. We’ve certainly had a very long day. You really mustn’t abstain from sleep for my sake... there’s certainly... room for two.”

_If you get in there you’ll hold him so tight he’ll pop. He’s bound to notice things. You’re bound to fuck everything up. Temptation too great. Abort. Abort._ “Nah. M’not sleepy. Think I’ll stay up and... do stuff.”

“Get _in_, Crowley,” the angel mumbled into his pillow, voice heavy with drowsiness.

“Trust me,” he implored, “you really don’t want that. I’m - I’m a terrible sleeping companion. I’ll hog the duvet. I’m a fidgeter. Might even kick you out of bed in the middle of the night, angel, I’m the _worst_.”

The angel let out a long stuttering breath.

All of Crowley’s resolve dissolved instantly. “All right, then. You’ve convinced me. Scootch over, angel,” Crowley whispered, a little desperately. The angel didn’t move. “... Angel? Azirapha -? You’ve fallen asleep, haven’t you. You. _You_. Ssssssssssss.” He knew it had been too good to be true. “Fine. Don’t flatter yourself. Didn’t want to get in there with you, anyway. Can’t think of anything worse, actually.”

The angel let out a soft snore. 

Crowley didn’t know why it made him feel all soppy inside. But he resented it.

Anathema had left a jug of ice water on the bedside table, a glass, and a small bowl with a flannel. He wet the flannel, for something to do, and lay it on the angel’s forehead. Aziraphale didn’t even stir under the touch, even as the demon wiped the cloth gently down the side of the still face and against the hot neck.

Not a peep out of him. Completely conked out.

Crowley settled himself down for a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, it means the world to me.  
I swear, there’ll be plot in the next chapter, once I get around to writing it :) please let me know your thoughts, I’m grateful you’ve stayed with me so far!


	5. In which there is panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a bit of horror in this one. If you don’t like creepy crawlies, might give it a miss.

Crowley hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

He lifted his head, blearily squinting yellow slitted eyes about the unfamiliar room.

Light shone obnoxiously through an inadequate net curtain on the right, flicking him in the eyeballs like a kid with an elastic band. He scrabbled for glasses that were half way down his chin, and wedged into the mattress. When he managed to shove them back up to his face, he found that they were bent a bit and settled wonkily on his nose.

“Neh,” he mumbled out, wiping at the dried drool on the corner of his mouth, “Mmff. Wassatime?”

His lower half was currently doing its best at occupying an uncomfortable wooden chair, a difficult feat for a demon who was sometimes a snake, his hips were much too wiggly and kept trying to slide off. His upper limbs were sporadically sprawled out on top of the bed, one hand clutching at a damp flannel that had left wet darkened splodges on an unfamiliar duvet cover.

The duvet wasn’t black or red or silk or distinguished grey, so it definitely wasn’t his own. But neither was it dusty or tartan or cream, so it wasn’t the angel’s just-for-show, in-case-a-human-wandered-up-there, and occasionally-used-by-a-certain-too-sloshed-to-miracle-himself-sober-demon, bed either.

So, where the bloody Heaven...?

Oh. Oh yeah. That’s right. They’d crashed at the witch’s house, hadn’t they? Another one of his bright ideas, that he hadn’t actually thought through properly.

Crowley lifted his head groggily. And yep, there he was, there was the bastard who’d caused this whole mess.

The angel was still asleep, or unconscious, or whatever. His face above the duvet was pale and sweating, with a red flush creeping up his neck and chin, visible around the bandage which was now saturated with brown and yellow, and sparkling in places with blotches of angelic gold.

Shit.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale just lay there, exactly where Crowley had left him last night.

That was probably a bad thing.

Crowley himself was a restless sleeper, he wiggled and snuggled and kicked out his lanky legs and threw pillows about with great aplomb, and miracled duvets in and out of existence as he pleased during the course of the night. Or day. Or couple of centuries. And often, he found himself snaking up the walls, slithering into corners, or curling up on the ceiling, all to find the comfiest sleeping position.

Sure enough, when he looked down, he could see that the covers around where his own head had been lying were scrunched up from his demonic tossing and turning.

But Aziraphale slept like the recently deceased. Like a bloody log.

“Angel?” Crowley rasped, shuffling up onto the bed, on his knees.

There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre, because the angel was right slap bang in the middle of the mattress where Crowley had plonked him the night before. The inconsiderate git.

Crowley briefly considered the merits of turning into a snake to better sidle up to the sleeping angel, but thought better of it. If he nosed at the angel in his serpentine form, there’d be no helping himself. He’d wrap around Aziraphale like a boa constrictor and crush him to an angelic pulp.

Instincts, y’know.

He cleared his throat, “Don’t suppose you fancy waking up anytime today?”

Crowley paused long enough for a response, but obviously, didn’t get one. There was an odd sort of hollow feeling inside of him, like someone had scooping out a cavern in his chest. He thought it might be grief. Which was stupid. He was being stupid.

“No. Right. Didn’t think you would. Well, all right, then. Don’t mind me, I’m just checking you haven’t up and died in the night, that’s all.” He sniffed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Angel. I said - oi, you listening? I said, _just checking you haven’t died.”_

Nothing. Not even a wrinkle of that pink upturned nose.

“Okay, fine.” Crowley grumbled, “Ignore me, then. Too high and mighty to respond to a lowly demon like me, I get it.”

The angel’s pillow was damp with sweat, and Aziraphale’s white hair was wet with it too, sticking to his forehead in tight ringlets. At this rate, he’d need another bath. He looked all hot and sticky. Pink across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Probably not very comfortable.

The demon wet the flannel again, and dabbed at the angel’s face gently.

There. All better.

Crowley allowed himself to touch the angel’s hot cheek, then, patting it lightly with his hand, “Wakey wakey,” he cajoled, “it’s unbecoming of an angel to nap you know. Constant vigilance, or whatever crap you usually spout. Virtue never sleeps, right? Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale was feverish under his hand, but he didn’t move or moan in response to the gentle touch, he didn’t acknowledge it at all.

The patting, admittedly, was becoming more of a stroking movement, a light smoothing of his thumb under the angel’s eye, the round plumpness of his cheek cupped in Crowley’s palm.

His skin was so soft, even slightly damp as it was.

Crowley needed to stop, he knew he did. But the demon just didn't have it in him to, not just yet. Let him have this for just a moment longer. It felt right, to comfort the angel like this, a soothing touch, surely there was no harm in that?

But then, what if the angel woke up to having his face cradled, what would he think?

Would he maybe huff embarrassedly, but ultimately relent and offer Crowley one of those blessedly tender looks, one that made the skin around his blue eyes go all crinkled and fond, and then - then would he press his warm cheek slightly into Crowley’s palm...?

Fffffff.

Yeah, right.

Of course he bloody wouldn’t.

This was Aziraphale. If he woke up now, to find Crowley gripping at his cheeks like the demon that he was, he’d fluster and flounce, and say quite primly, and without mercy, _‘Good gracious, what in the Hell do you think you’re doing?! Pray, remove your unworthy demonic mitts from my holy visage at once!’_

He might even bring out the affronted, disappointed look, and grouse,_ ‘Well, really, this is quite the invasion of personal space, dear boy. I think we ought not venture into this sort of reprehensible dalliance, don’t you?’_

Or, well, something to that effect.

Worse still, Aziraphale could crack open those bruised eyelids and go still with shock at the demon’s proximity. He’d be too tired to get away, might even flinch back, but he’d be at the demon’s mercy.

So, time to get his filthy hands off him, already.

Crowley forced himself to release the angel’s soft face, and he moved his hands away to grip at the bedcovers in twin clenched fists instead.

Aziraphale had felt hot under his palm. Much too hot. Crowley supposed it was like a bad sunburn, always worse the day after. The kind where you don’t even notice the extent of the damage until you wake up the next morning, and see that overnight you’ve somehow turned into a recently boiled lobster.

Of course, Crowley was more likely to freckle than burn outright, but Aziraphale, well, there was an English Rose if ever he saw one. Too much sun, or hellfire in this case, and he was as pink as anything.

And he wasn’t waking up. Not even after having his face viciously manhandled by a demon. But, on the bright side, the angel was obviously still alive. Guess there wasn’t much to do at this point, Aziraphale would either wake up again or he wouldn’t.

Crowley hitched his wonky glasses up onto the top of his head, and rubbed his hands down his face, with a great deal more force than was strictly necessary, as if he were trying to pull off his own skin.

Ungh, yeah yeah. All right. He knew that he needed to go and get the witch, and start devising a plan or something, he knew that.

But at the moment, all he wanted to do was clamber under the sheets and gather the sweaty, hot, idiot in his arms and hug him close, pressing his nose into those damp curls.

Maybe even dare to lean in, until their faces were close, like they had been last night.

Christ. He was bad. Very very _bad_. Maybe he could go pour some bleach in his ears and swill it around a bit and hopefully dissolve all those thoughts, and most of his brain in the process.

Crowley settled for pressing a gentle kiss to the angel’s balmy forehead, because he had done that before, when the angel had been awake, so he was allowed, right?

Just a tiny little thing, barely a kiss at all. Not even worth noting. Nothing but a brush of lips on fevered skin. And if Crowley lingered just that little bit too long before drawing away, well, there was no one to bare witness, and he was still a demon, so suck it.

“Be right back, angel, you have yourself a nice lie in. No no, don’t get up, I insist. I’ll handle this. You just... stay here, you lazy sod, have a bit of a snooze. Enjoy your morning off.”

Aziraphale’s response was to blink awake with an annoyed pout, daintily swing his legs over to get out of bed, and slip his pink feet into a pair of miracled fleece-lined loafers, all the while spouting the virtues of early mornings and requesting a newspaper, or at least the sudoku and crossword pages, along with a light continental breakfast, and several cups of builder’s strength tea.

Nah, just pulling your leg. Crowley blinked away the stupid, impossibly hopeful, thought. The angel was dead to the world, as still and silent as any sleeping princess in a fairytale, and likely to remain that way for the indeterminate future.

Maybe Crowley should put him under glass or something, keep the dust from settling over him, if he planned to sleep for a while. He remembered the cobwebs in his hair after his own ill-planned century long nap. Though, he had a sneaking suspicion that the angel had come in and spring cleaned every decade or so.

There had been tiny telltale touches of Aziraphale lingering everywhere, a book left on the table, a pot of loose leaf tea in the cupboard, and the most compelling - Crowley was entirely certain that he hadn’t been covered with a warm tartan blanket when he’d nodded off. 

He was just repaying the favour, that was all.

Before he left, the demon cracked open the window a little to let out the sickly, humid, stuffy air that had accumulated overnight. The cool morning breeze filtered in like a balm. Probably wouldn’t do much good, but Aziraphale had always enjoyed the smell of jasmine flowers and the scent was drifting languidly on the air outside.

Then with one final longing glance at the sleeping angel, he went down the creaky stairs, following the tantalising scent of blistering hot coffee.

The living room was covered in books, occult and angelic, medical and biblical, open at seemingly random pages and stuck with pieces of rectangular card with neat little handwritten notes on them. It was organised chaos.

“What the...?” Crowley breathed, gingerly stepping around an enormous archaic tome with a veritable forest of notes sticking out of its crumbly pages. He spied Anathema sitting on the tartan sofa with an open book resting on her knees, diligently writing something in the margin with a pencil, “Oi witch, what the hell is this? Did you even sleep?”

The witch lifted her head up, and regarded him coolly, “Get me some more coffee,” she demanded, indicating an empty cup on the coffee table with her head, still writing furiously and pushing up her spectacles when they slid down her nose.

Crowley would normally sneer at such a request made by anyone but the one being in existence that he would pull his own heart out of his chest for.

And the witch, obviously, wasn’t that being.

He should tell her to get her own damn coffee, he was a demon after all, didn’t she realise what that meant? He could fill that cup with poison, or even chamomile tea if he was feeling particularly vindictive, but... _nghh, _Anathema had an air about her of deep seated worry, and she was obviously researching ways to help the angel, and even if it was stupid and wouldn’t amount to anything, he could definitely relate to that. And maybe, even, want to help out, a little.

He settled for poking his forked tongue out at her and making a face.

Then he went to the quaint little cottage kitchen, grumbling all the way, and set about making two fresh cups of coffee.

The process soothed him. He knew why Aziraphale often enjoyed doing things the human way, instead of just miracling things up. There was comfort to be found in physically going through the motions of something so mundane and ordinary. His fingers were a bit less jittery now, at least. And after spilling some expensive coffee artfully around and leaving a wet teaspoon inside the sugar pot, he started to feel a bit better, a bit more like himself.

Upon returning to the living room, Crowley made the mistake of glancing out of the bay windows, and what he saw there caused him to swear internally, nearly dropping the hot coffee at the sudden jolt of fear that jerked up his spine.

The Bentley was still sat outside.

He’d only gone and left the _Bentley_ right outside the house for the whole bloody world to see, hadn’t he?

Christ.

He pushed the cups at Anathema who took them both with a questioning eyebrow and then he legged it out of the cottage, up the garden path and out of the gate, to his beloved car.

In the light of day, his poor Bentley looked even worse than he remembered. Ash caked every crevice of her paintwork like settled dust, grey grime had mixed with morning dew and coagulated on the windscreen as if she’d recently been hauled out of a muddy bog, or locked away in some grungy, mouldy old basement for years.

Crowley wouldn't do her a disservice and attempt to clean her with a miracle, it wasn’t enough to thank her, not nearly enough for what she had done for his angel.

He’d wash her properly, pamper her, scrub the dirt away with his own hands, Hell, he’d get down on his knees with a sponge and bucket if he had to.

Just... uh, not right now. Sorry.

Later though, he promised.

Fuck knows how she put up with him.

“You can’t stay here,” the demon told her, with a soft desperation, “m’sorry, really, but you’re too conspicuous, so you’ll have to... bugger off for a bit. Thanks, though. I owe you one. I’ll treat you to a full diagnostics, promise. The full monty. I’ll even top you up with some petrol, how does that sound? And I’m talking about the really fancy stuff here, none of that cheap crap. I mean the kind of petrol that says ‘plus’ or ‘super’ or some shit next to it. Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve been wanting to try it out for the past decade, don’t think I haven’t seen you eyeing it up when we drive past the Services. I’ll get it for you, anything you want. You deserve it. No expense spared. All right?”

She seemed to sag slightly, as if a little air had been let out of her ash encrusted tyres, but made no move to leave. It was as if she were waiting for something, her windscreen wiper creaked upwards slightly as if she were giving him the motor equivalent of an expectantly raised eyebrow.

He patted her, comfortingly, on the hood.

They were much the same, in this, at least. In their love for a certain ethereal idiot. She’d ferried the angel about enough, had even switched the radio to play BBC 4 for him on occasion, so, yeah, he was bound to have rubbed off on her. Endeared himself. Aziraphale was like that.

“There’s nothing more you can do for him, old girl. He’s...” _currently comatose upstairs, burning with hellfire fever, and he won’t wake up._ “Well, I won’t lie to you and say it’s not bad, ‘cause it is. It’s really fucking bad.” He let out a breath, and gently rubbed a streak of soot from her paintwork with the pad of his thumb. “But he’s safe for now, and I’ll do my best to keep it that way.”

She didn’t move. There was a soft groan of ancient brake pads. It sounded mournful.

“Oh, shut up. Stop moping, all right? I’m not gonna let him... nghhhh, you _know_ I’d never let him - hrnk, for the love of all that’s unholy - you’re putting him in danger hanging around out here. Now...” he took his hand off her and made a shooing motion with it, “Go on. Bugger off before someone sees you.”

The Bentley seemed to mull it over for a long moment, then she dutifully started up her own engine and trundled off, begrudgingly, into the early morning fog.

A great cloud of blackened dust belched out of her exhaust pipe and Crowley waved it out of his face, irritably.

It was for the best. She’d be all right. Might even forgive him, eventually.

Coffee now, internal panicking later.

He slithered back inside.

Just in time to hear something shatter alarmingly loudly. His feet moved so fast he might’ve accidentally flown.

The witch had flattened herself against the back wall of the living room, expression tight and shocked, with a book clutched to her chest, making her reminiscent of a certain angelic bookkeeper when confronted with a customer.

The bay window had been broken, and there was glass everywhere, scattered all over the carpet and the books. The newly flowered cactus had been knocked over in the assault, and now lay on the floor, its terracotta pot in orange shards around it.

Crowley brandished his arms about, “I only left for five bloody seconds!”

Newt thundered down the stairs with his hair comically stuck up in a number of unholy angles and his glasses askew, obviously woken by the noise. He went to the witch after staring open mouthed at the window, or lack thereof, picking carefully over the glass, and getting to her side protectively.

They clung together as young lovers tended to do, and Crowley felt his lips pull back in a grimace at the sight of it. Soppy humans. He definitely wasn’t thinking of Aziraphale looking at him like that, with desperation and relief shining in those blue eyes, nope. Not him. He didn’t need crap like that. Humans were gross.

“Are you okay? What _happened?_” Newt sputtered out, in shock.

Hell if Crowley knew.

The demon quickly snapped his fingers and the window reassembled itself like a jigsaw puzzle, there was a tinny screeching sound as the shining glass fragments scraped against one another and clicked audibly into place.

What the heaven had that been? Had someone thrown a sodding brick through the window?

Anathema had seemingly regathered her wits and was now glaring at him, hotly, “Did you just throw something through my window?” She inquired with an ire that had even Crowley, a literal demon from Hell, backing away a little.

Crowley glared back, an incredulous expression muddling his eyebrows, “_Me?_ Why the Heaven would I - of _course_ I bloody didn’t! Why would I throw something through your window, then come in here and fix it again? Fffffff.”

“Well, you were just out there! Did you see who it was?”

He hadn't seen anyone, so he just growled at her, and then scrabbled around on the carpet for the real culprit. His fingers found something round and solid.

Crowley lifted it up.

It was an apple. Nowhere near hard enough by itself to break through a sodding double-glazed cottage window, so that meant it had to have been charged somehow and, sure enough, it crackled in his hand as he turned it over, with lingering occult energy.

Demon, then. Oh, great. Had to be a bloody _demon_, didn't it?

He squinted at the apple as if it had personally wronged him. It was perfectly red and shiny, probably from some neighbour’s tree. He knew Adam liked to go scrumping around here, a bit of harmless fun, and he could see why, if this was the kind of bounty that was on offer.

Crowley turned the fruit over as he felt something wriggling alarmingly against his palm.

Oh. Ew. Gross!

There was a single white maggot coiling in the white flesh of the apple, it had made itself a tiny little hole and coiled up in it, contentedly. Crowley flicked it to the ground immediately and crushed it under his snakeskin boot where it made a disgusting pop.

“_Hastur_,” he growled through his gritted teeth.

Fuckety fuckety _fuck_.

All right, so now they knew what they were up against, and the odds were bad, but could be worse, though he didn’t know how exactly they could be worse at the moment, because he registered, in a slight daze, that he was panicking.

No time for that shit now, get a hold of yourself.

There were humans in here.

Oh, that’s right, he’d only gone and endangered sodding humans, hadn’t he? Very mortal, very vulnerable humans. Had to bring a bloody demon straight to their bloody front door, didn’t he? Nice going.

“Right,” Crowley said to himself, and then his face carefully filtered into a perfect mask of pure, unadulterated calm. He turned to the humans, hoping to look cool and collected and just a bit like he knew exactly what he was doing. “Don’t mean to alarm you, but the house is now in lockdown. There’s a Duke of Hell outside, real nasty character, not like me, and it looks like he’s going to try and murder us all.”

All right, so he wasn’t exactly great at the whole _comforting_ thing, but at least he was honest.

“Wha - _what?!_”

“You. Uh. _Newt_,” he jabbed a finger at the rapidly paling human who had just spoken, “go sit down somewhere quiet, hold onto your knees and kiss your arse goodbye.” Against his better judgement, he turned to Anathema and said, “Witch, if you can take it, you’re with me.”

“The cottage is protected,” insisted the witch, folding her arms, and raising her eyebrows, “I saw to it myself. Old family protection charms. There’s no need to panic just yet, no unwanted visitors can get inside.”

Crowley raised a disbelieving eyebrow, “Protected?” He repeated, “_pro-_bloody_-tected?_ Pffft. Your little horseshoe trick didn’t keep me out, and I _am_ a demon, you know, in case it had somehow escaped your notice. What makes you think another demon can’t just waltz in here as well?” He jabbed a thumb at the bay window, “_And_ he just lobbed an apple through your window! Didn’t protect against _that_ did you?”

This was the exact point in conversation where Aziraphale would admonish him, glaring at him with those disappointed eyes and telling him not to be so ridiculously antagonistic to the humans who were only trying to help. But he wasn’t there, so Crowley refused to feel guilty about his outburst. So, mnf. So there.

“But he can’t get in,” said Anathema sternly, obviously annoyed at Crowley’s lack of faith in her witchcraft, “he can break what he likes but he can’t step over the threshold. The horseshoe keeps those with ill intentions from being able to get inside without invitation,” she explained, as if speaking to a toddler. “It’ll keep this other demon out, as long as he wants to kill us.”

“Oh, well that’s - that’s reassuring, isn’t it?” mumbled Newt running a hand over his face, “As long as he keeps wanting to _murder us_, we’ll be absolutely fine.”

“Pretty much,” the witch agreed, with a shrug, “We just have to make sure to keep everything closed. If we open anything, it’s an invitation.”

Newt looked visibly panicked by this. He was probably wondering if he’d left the back door open or something, but was too scared to look.

Crowley rolled his yellow eyes. “We’re not bloody _vampires_,” he muttered under his breath, sullenly. But admittedly, he was never one for complicated spells, and didn’t dabble in things geared purely against demons for obvious reasons. The most he’d managed were those protective wards on the angel’s bookshop, and they hadn’t lasted long in the grand scheme of things. Maybe the witch knew what she was doing, she seemed fairly confident at least. He wouldn’t tell her that of course, no use giving her a big head.

Anathema turned to the demon, asking him seriously, “Did you shut the door on your way back in?”

Well, what the hell did she take him for? He was just thinking about what an all right sort of witch she was, then she goes and asks that. It was demeaning, is what it was.

“_‘Course_ I did,” Crowley scowled, “m’not an _idiot!_ Christ. Give me some credit, here. I’m hardly gonna leave the bloody front door wide open, am I?”

But then his mind immediately thought of the window he’d left hanging open in the guest bedroom, and he was suddenly absolutely petrified.

There was a horrible pained cry from upstairs, all eyes whipped up to the ceiling.

“Oh great big sweaty pendulous _bollocks_,” whispered Crowley, heart suddenly thundering with panic, “angel!”

They leapt up the stairs.

.........

Aziraphale had been having the most lovely dream.

Or, at least, he had assumed it had been a dream, having not had much opportunity to experience such a thing before, there was a chance it might have been something else. In any case, it had involved a certain demon, and he had touched Aziraphale’s face so softly, so very kindly, so painstakingly gently, that the angel had felt as precious and adored as one of his most prized books.

He fancied that Crowley had even placed a cool kiss upon his brow, and well, it had been absolutely wonderful.

Aziraphale had felt completely content, right down to the tips of his toes.

But now -

He had been abruptly startled awake, spine tingling with trepidation, as if a mental proximity alarm had been triggered. As if the bell above his bookshop’s front door had jangled loudly at an unexpected intrusion. There was something deeply amiss.

If Aziraphale wasn’t mistaken, he had just been rudely awoken from his slumber by several somethings crawling in through the open window and pooling on the floor in a misshapen puddle.

Upon squinting, the puddle reformed into a human-ish shape wearing a grubby trench coat and black fingerless gloves, with a very dark and demonic demeanour about it.

Upon further inspection still, and now internally panicking quite a bit, Aziraphale realised that it was, in fact, the demon known as Hastur that was now standing in the bedroom with him.

A Duke of Hell.

Aziraphale didn’t swear often, even inside the sanctity of his own thoughts, but today he decided to make an exception, because there really were no words in the English lexicon that were more appropriate at this juncture.

_Well,_ the angel thought, a little hysterically, _bugger me._

This was not the time to be caught with one’s trousers down, so to speak, and here he was, holed up in bed, without said trousers, feverish, admittedly feeling a little ill, and all alone, while one of Hell’s finest, that is to say, worst, prowled around the other side of the room grinning at him like a loon.

He very nearly squeaked out for help.

But somehow, Lord knows how exactly, because he was prone to often speaking before thinking, Aziraphale managed to stop the sound before it fully formed.

This demon had a personal vendetta against Crowley, or so Aziraphale had surmised from the brief encounter with him during the holy water trial in Hell. It wouldn’t do for dear Crowley to be called up here to his doom. No, Aziraphale would do his best to ah, frighten the demon off, before it came to that.

He distinctly remembered that Hastur been the one to drop that other little demon into the bath, in order to test its potency, and Aziraphale had seen firsthand how he had relished in watching the poor creature fizzle away into nothing. He would certainly have no qualms about seeing Crowley hurt or killed, would even immensely enjoy watching him suffer the same fate.

In summary, Hastur was a vile chap, and not one who could be reasoned with.

Hastur’s dishevelled white wig had shifted on his head to reveal the two gloomy wet eyes of the insipid frog hiding beneath it. The demon’s own eyes were dilated, with no whites to speak of. They were dark and foreboding, and he had a wicked grin on his face that whispered of horrible, nasty, despicable plans, that Aziraphale had no undue urge to stick around and see come to fruition.

“Who - who are you?” The angel had the foresight to squeak indignantly, simultaneously clutching at the duvet covers and pulling them up to his chin. “And what in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing in here?”

It wouldn’t do for the demon to know he had any idea who he was. Play the fool and they’ll always underestimate you. Aziraphale had been playing the fool for millennia, and he’d become remarkably adept at it, even convincing himself of his own incompetence at some points.

Hastur snorted, looking amused at the sight of his quivering, “Psh, don’t even try it. We’ve met before, you and me, ain’t we? In Hell, when you were covering for the traitor by wearing his ugly face. Yeah. That’s right, I know all about it. An’ to answer your question, ‘cause I’m feeling generous, little angel,” he singsonged, “I’ve come ‘ere to _murder_ you. Heh heh.”

Aziraphale’s mouth dropped open. How in the _blazes_...?

Oh. Dash it all. Never mind all that tripe, then. Found out already, was he? Well. These things happened, he supposed. Best thing to do was move on, put his best foot forward and all that. Right. What to do now?

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, quite unconvincingly, and with a smile as bright as a lightbulb, “Hell, you say? Good gracious. No no, can’t say I’ve ever gone _Down There_. No. I think you’ve mistaken me for somebody else.”

Yes, that ought to do the trick.

Hastur didn’t look fooled, in fact he looked oddly delighted at the angel’s clumsy attempt at subterfuge. “Heh! Nice try. But I know everythin’. All about you two swapping bodies and all the other disgusting stuff you been up to together. Everythin’.”

“My dear fellow, I’m quite certain,” Aziraphale wheezed with a scowl, “that I have no inkling,” he coughed, “of what you could possibly be implying,” he cleared his throat for good measure, when his breaths had started to escape him in little pants, “but rest assured, I shall not hesitate to smite you if you dare come any closer! Do you know who you’re dealing with? I am a Principality, I’ll have you know. A Holy Guardian. I’ll smite you if you do so much as raise a finger against me, so help me, don’t think I won’t! Now, ah, _be gone, demon!_”

Hastur cackled, until he was positively hooting with glee, hunched over and clutching at his belly, “Hoo, that’s a good one! Fuckin’ Heaven, hehehe! I needed that.”

Aziraphale bristled. Although he was quite used to being belittled, because the other angels had never been too fond of him and his silly ways, it still stung. “Well, _really_,” he huffed out, indignantly.

“You even seen yerself lately? Don’t think you’ve got it in you to smite a fly. We both know you ain’t no match for me, ‘specially not in your condition. Not feelin’ your best, are you, little angel?”

“My health is no concern of yours,” said Aziraphale, contritely, “now whatever you have come here for, disregarding the previous comment about murder, I’m sure we can discuss it like reasonable celestial entities. There’s really no need for violence.”

“Are you thick, little angel? I’ve come ‘ere to finish you off, did a sloppy job of it before.”

“You mean to say - it was _you_ -” This was the demon who had burnt down his beloved bookshop. All of his poor books, oh the books, he’d burnt them all, without rhyme or reason. All of his most prized possessions destroyed on the whim of this infernal creature. “But,” Aziraphale gasped out, miserably, “But, why on _earth_ would you - surely, you’ve no quarrel with me, personally? I - I hardly even _know_ you!”

“Didn’ the traitor tell you wot he did? Melted another demon di’n’t he, right in front of me.”

Aziraphale was quite aware that Crowley had indeed used the tartan thermos he had given him, and thankfully the demon had the foresight to keep himself protected while doing so, or he might have ended up like the frightful mess Aziraphale had seen in his flat. Nothing but a dark demonic stain on the carpet.

The angel could see why this might be a traumatising event to have witnessed, the dissolving of a fellow demon before one’s very eyes, however he was under the impression that most demons weren’t overly fond of one another, and often took great joy in each other’s pain.

Therefore, either Hastur had indeed lost someone who he considered a friend and was now seeking vengeance, or he was just using this as an excuse for further demonic mayhem.

Either way, he was quite possibly in a great deal of danger.

“Did he indeed?” muttered Aziraphale, sweating visibly, “My my.”

“Enough stallin’, time to scream little angel.”

Aziraphale struggled to sit upright, to either run away, or get himself in a better position to fight if it come to that - but Hastur was faster, he grabbed a fistful of the angel’s pyjama top in his fingerless gloved hand, and hauled Aziraphale bodily out of bed, pinning him against the wall.

Oh dear, well, this was certainly much more agreeable when Crowley was the one doing it.

Aziraphale couldn’t stop his eyes widening in fright at the demon’s proximity. Oh, goodness, the Duke smelled terrible, truly vile, like rotting flesh and sewers. And up close like this, Aziraphale could see the warped, glistening skin of the demon, riddled with gangrenous warts and weeping black sores closer to the crown of his head, and that ghastly frog had shifted its webbed feet down to cover the white skin above the demon’s eyebrows, and was now pinning the angel with a bulbous unblinking glare.

“_Unhand me_,” Aziraphale said, voice wobbling all over the place, “I mean it, you odious creature. Unhand me at once! You’ll surely regret it, if you don’t let go of me this very _instant_!”

“Calm your tits, little angel, I ain’t gonna kill you until your best friend shows up to save the day.”

“Best - best friend?” The angel tried to scoff indignantly, but it was more of a panicked intake of breath, “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about!”

And then he kicked Hastur in the shin with his bare foot. Which yes, was admittedly a dirty move, to be sure, and unfitting of an angel, but desperate times called for desperate measures and the demon really did smell quite awful. Aziraphale simply couldn’t stand to be breathed on for a moment longer.

“Oof! _Fuck!_” Hastur let go of him for a split second, just enough for the angel to retaliate, to chance a quick miracle, to summon a sword.

But it all went a bit wrong.

Aziraphale’s legs had suddenly turned to jelly, and he fell to the floor in an ungainly fashion, hardly even able to crawl away from the now viciously swearing demon.

_Good Lord,_ the angel thought with some astonishment as he attempted to lever himself upright and failed, he’d never even heard some of those word combinations before. For a demon, this Hastur fellow really was quite creative with his word choice. More so, even, than Crowley, who had on occasion, thrown out some truly graphic and horrendously detailed swears, that had made the angel as abhorrently disgusted as he was secretly impressed.

Right, where was he? On the floor, apparently. Yes, that was the floor under his cheek. Better get up, hadn’t he? Ah, that was it, upsadaisy.

Oh - oh yes, the smiting. Of course. He could, ah, smite, if the occasion called for it - he’d done it before, hadn’t he? Or had he? He wasn't exactly sure, but it was a simple enough procedure, ah, just needed to call upon the Heavenly Light, as it were, and have it burst forth in a suitably smitey fashion, and well, that’s all there was to it... probably?

Only, Aziraphale wasn’t exactly feeling to up to the challenge of calling upon a well of Holy energy at the moment. Not feeling altogether capable of smiting, in fact, if he was honest, he was feeling a little under the weather. A series of hot and cold flushes shivered across his skin, and his borrowed pyjama top was damp with sweat, sticking to his back uncomfortably.

Quite suddenly, there were firm maggoty fingers around the angel’s neck.

Good Heavens. When - when had that happened? He was surely in a pickle now. The demon’s cracked nails had wedged into the partially healing burn, and then - Aziraphale could think of nothing but the sharp, stinging, vicious pain that clawed into his throat and seared across his senses.

Oh, oh, it _burned_.

Where - where in the name of _Heaven_ was Crowley? He usually swooped in to save the day at precisely this juncture in the proceedings. Honestly, he was being _terrorised_ by a demon for goodness’ sake, surely he must he emitting that very same distress signal that Crowley had always managed to pick up on before.

He could hear someone crying out in strangled pain. It sounded awful.

“That’s right little angel, nice and loud. You call him up here. Not long now, eh? I’ll soon put you out of your misery. Never let it be said that I ain’t chivalrous, very chivalrous me, on occasion.”

Aziraphale’s vision was starting to darken around the edges, as he grappled with the slimy grip around his neck. He was quite glad he wasn’t wearing his usual ensemble, or the demon would surely who have ruined his bowtie. Oh, this was ridiculous, he didn’t even need to breathe, it shouldn’t hurt so much - he was an angel - he could - he should be able to -

“Get your hands off him.”

Oh. Oh look. He blinked tear-filled eyes. Look. There was Crowley now, how wonderful of him to finally show up, and just in the nick of time too. He always did like to be fashionably late, and also, quite needlessly melodramatic. And now he’d achieved both things simultaneously. He must be feeling quite pleased with himself.

Aziraphale attempted to give the demon a warm smile, but he could feel it wobbling about unsteadily on his face, until it was probably indistinguishable from a grimace. And before he could stop them, a few tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes, quite embarrassingly.

“_Crowley_,” the angel whispered, almost reverently. Oh, sod it all, despite the obvious perilous danger, Aziraphale was still hopelessly glad to see him.

Crowley, on the other hand, looked equal parts furious and terrified at the sight of Aziraphale.

Oh dear, he didn’t look _too_ bad, did he?

“There you are, fucking _finally_,” Hastur drawled, turning his head a bit to acknowledge Crowley, “I just about squeezed his head off waiting for you to get here. Dunno how you cope with all the whinging an’ moaning, nearly drove me up the bloody wall.”

... Whinging and moaning? Well, there really was no call for that. Aziraphale didn’t whinge, and he certainly didn’t moan, thank you very much. He merely pointed out things in a constructive manner. The angel cracked open his mouth to tell the horrid creature so, but couldn’t quite manage to form any words. There was something hot and wet sliding down his neck. And, Good Lord, something -

Something was _wriggling!_

Aziraphale started in surprise, reaching up a shaking hand to grasp at his neck, and - and when it came away there was a handful of maggots spasming and squirming about in his palm.

He let out startled exclamation and threw the tiny things across the room in shock, where they skittered across the floor and were gone.

Oh - oh, how awful!

Then the angel tremblingly patted at the wound on his neck, around Hastur’s fingers, ignoring the jolts of agony in favour of seeing that there were no more of those ghastly creatures wiggling about in there. The thought had him shuddering in horrified distress. Breath coming in panicked pants. They - those _wretched_ things ate away at - they _ate_ \- oh, good heavens, it didn’t bare thinking about!

It was horrible - _horrible_ -

“Been aaages since I tasted an angel,” grinned Hastur, revealing rotten teeth, while Aziraphale cowered away from him and those horrid maggots, that even now were emerging from his skin like a corpse. “Mmm, s’all tingly. Like sticking yer tongue in the eternal sulphur pits. Think I’d like to enjoy it, y'know, draw it out for a bit. Nibble off a couple o’ fingers, an ear, scoop out one of them blue eyes, how does that sound, eh? Take it nice an’ slow.”

“Get the fuck away from him, Hastur,” Crowley growled, and his sunglasses had all but disappeared leaving wild golden eyes with hard black slits, like the eyes of a predator denied his kill, “I won’t tell you again. We’ve got holy water, oodles of it, fuckin’ buckets of the stuff, and I won’t hesitate to use it on you if you don’t back away from the angel right now!”

Crowley, wonderful Crowley.

Aziraphale loved him dearly, and wouldn’t change a single thing about him.

But oh, he was truly _awful_ at bluffing.

He did however, cut a very dashing figure, standing in the doorway with the light from the landing behind him. Very roguish. Aziraphale might have thought more on that, filed away the image of Crowley, coming so valiantly to his rescue, to peruse later at his leisure, if he wasn’t currently having a small panic attack and shivering in a miserable heap on the floor.

Aziraphale thought, actually, that he might just be losing his grip on consciousness. A bit. But that - that couldn’t be - he couldn’t let himself... with Crowley’s arrival, he couldn’t even consider giving into the pull of that tempting darkness that blotted the world with splatters of black.

No, no, Crowley was in danger now as well... oh, Crowley - he had to... to...

The fingers around his neck tightened, and there was nothing but hot white sizzling agony, and Aziraphale was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My motivation is dwindling, but I will continue to write. I promise. And I really appreciate the interest in this story so far.  
Thank you so much for reading, you beautiful, wonderful person, you :)


End file.
